Category Archives: Healthy Air Oregon

Coal trains and beloved local spots

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The coal industry wants us to believe that coal exports are inevitable, and that supporting continued mining and burning coal is our destiny. I would argue that a beautiful community and renewable energy future is our destiny, and obsolete coal is the doom and desperation of Big Dirty Coal.

Coal train tracks near River Road neighborhood

How will the proposed arrival of coal trains in Eugene and West Lane County impact our communities? I’ve thought of a few local landmarks that will be in the path of the coal train. I would enjoy reading what others think – what places are dear to you that will be impacted by four or more coal trains every day?

The Oregon Country Fair is a special spot that might suffer a tourism crisis if a coal trains passed within a few dozen yards. We’d see coal dust instead of fairy dust on those dancing, semi-naked bodies. The sound of screeching coal trains passing by eight times each day (round trip) would be unwanted percussion to the nightly jam sessions.

And sweet little Veneta. Last week, as I was having dinner at Our Daily Bread restaurant right off Highway 126, I chatted with another person about the coal trains. We both eyed the rail road tracks a few hundred yards from the restaurant. “I’m worried about what the noise and dust would do to our businesses here in Veneta,” the woman said. “A lot of people I know don’t want a coal train, but no one in Veneta has spoken out.”

One of my best friends and her husband routinely take their canoe out to Warren Slough, part of the Fern Ridge’s corridor of channels that lead through a very special wildlife viewing area. To get to the fishing areas south of the Reservoir, a canoe will have to pass directly under the rickety train trestle. Any coal dust spoiling a wetland, lake or stream would boost the acidity of the water and introduce heavy metals and pollutants that would, in turn, threaten aquatic life. As a consequence, the birds (and the people) that feed on the local fish would be harmed.

Trainsong Park, near the train tracks, is just one of many locations that would be impacted by coal train traffic

Here are just a few other landmarks that have meaning for me…

• Steward Ponds – a protected wetlands only .6mi from the coal train track.

• Peterson Community Center – site of many community events, classes and sporting activities. Barely .6 mi from the coal train track.

• Greenhill Humane Society – dogs and cats that already have some trauma in the their lives would be subjected to train whistles and the heavy rumble of the train day and night – only .5mi separates the animals from the tracks.

• The Fern Ridge Bike Trail actually crosses the train tracks, so that if you are out for a pleasant bike ride and some exercise, you can take in a lung-full of diesel particulate and coal dust too!

I agree with Eric de Place from the Sightline Institute who put the coal train issue so well, “I think you’re looking at a sort of degraded Northwest that doesn’t look like the kind of Northwest we’ve seen in the past. The region has not been a heavily fossil-fuel-dependent economy ever in its history … all of a sudden (it would will be) very much embedded in the economy of the coal industry.” A degraded Country Fair and Fern Ridge Reservoir is not the vision I have for my community.

What’s your vision? What places do you care about? Please share with me.

And please join us this Saturday to march in the Eugene Celebration Parade. Our theme is “Raise the Roof! King Coal and the Fossil Fools.” We need lots of folks participating to make a big impact. We’ve got costumes! Just show up!

Read more about how to find us!

Lisa Arkin, Executive Director
Beyond Toxics

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Stopping coal: A renewed moral imperative

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For children who live near the train yards, coal trains would be an added health risk burden

I want to be clear: I am not against trains (I often travel by passenger train)! I am, however, critical about using our rail system to haul coal to coastal ports and then load the coal and ship it off to Asian destinations. And justifiably so! Besides the significant safety issues posed by rail shipment of massive amounts of coal, we should consider the certainty of grave health problems we will have to address.

It is already true that health problems associated with polluted air occur in our community. Beyond Toxics has engaged with community health issues in the River Road, Trainsong and Bethel neighborhoods for many years. Recently we completed a community health survey in West Eugene. A striking pattern emerged. We found that 30% of the nearly 350 households we interviewed believe that at least one family member suffers from asthma. A 2006 study by State of Oregon did find a higher than expected number of lung cancers in this area. But more research needs to be done.

What do we know about the relationship between health hazards and the transportation of coal?

By the numbers
Let’s begin with words straight from a Burlington-Northern Santa Fe Rail Road research document they posted on their website. The document is called Coal Dust-Frequently Asked Questions and it addressed the question, How extensive is the coal dust problem?

“Since 2005, BNSF has been at the forefront of extensive research regarding the impacts of coal dust escaping from loaded coal cars … From these studies, BNSF has determined that … The amount of coal dust that escapes from Powder River Basin coal trains is surprisingly large. …BNSF has done studies indicating that from 500 lbs to a ton of coal can escape from a single loaded coal car. Other reports have indicated that as much as 3% of the coal loaded into a coal car can be lost in transit. In many areas, a thick layer of black coal dust can be observed along the railroad right of way and in between the tracks. … large amounts of coal dust accumulate rapidly…”

So let’s do the math. Multiplying the amount of coal projected to arrive at the Port of Coos Bay, which is 6 – 10 million tons per year, by BNSF’s suggested 3% product loss, this calculation suggests that coal trains would release as much as 300,000 tons of coal dust along its journey through Oregon. That is an immense amount of highly toxic coal dust every day of the year!

Due to the extreme weight of a coal train and its length of 125-150 cars, four to five locomotives are required to haul it. Therefore each train passing through Eugene has at least four times the emission pollution due to diesel particulate of a single-locomotive train.

Each train that comes through Eugene on the way to the coast must make a return trip over the same rail line. The communities along the tracks will get repeated exposure to the pollution, the noise and traffic jams for each coal train.

Health Issues
Remember that the health impacts from air pollution are from the two sources: coal dust and diesel particulate. The health impacts from both are similar enough that we can discuss them together as a related set of very debilitating health outcomes.

There’s strong evidence that diesel is a lot more poisonous than other types of particulate matter because emissions also contain toxic metals and carcinogenic hydrocarbons. The World Health Organization has declared diesel particulate to be a carcinogen. Over 40 studies have linked diesel exhaust to lung cancer, as well as cancers of the bladder and soft tissues. However, there are no federal standards specifically for diesel emissions.

Though it would be enough to raise our outrage if this issue just affected the areas closest to the train tracks, this is not a localized problem for people living in the Trainsong, or River Road neighborhoods. Pollution from coal trains would become a citywide hazard.

Extensive and costly studies of the health impacts to nearby communities has been done by the California Air Resources Board at many of California’s rail yards. The additional risk of cancer from breathing or absorbing toxic diesel particulate is increased to 25-100 times over the normal risk of getting cancer. Any resident living within 2 miles of the railyard is in a zone considered to be an unacceptable cancer risk (CA Air Resources Board).

What does that mean for us?

There are 27 schools within a 2-mile radius, 14 daycares and a number of senior living residences. A dramatic increase in coal train traffic through Eugene means significantly increased health risks for young children and adults alike!

The coal industry spends millions to sway Americans to give their support for more coal, euphemistically calling it “clean coal.

This is a public relations deception so, let’s not be fooled…the environmental and health costs necessary to mine it, transport it, burn it, and dispose of its waste make “clean coal” the equivalent of “happy heart attacks” or “friendly carcinogens.”

As writer Kathleen Dean Moore, a Distinguished Professor at Oregon State University, put it, “We have a moral obligation to avert future harms, so as to leave a world as rich in life and possibility as the world we inherited.”

Any way you look at it, coal should not be part of Oregon’s future. We have a duty to stand up and say, NO!

Lisa Arkin, Executive Director
Beyond Toxics

See the Stopping Coal in Oregon home page for more background on the issue

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The economics of exporting coal through Oregon

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Each coal train spews 1 pound of dust per mile travelled!The Port of Coos Bay is planning to build a terminal to export coal delivered via rail by trains that would snake through the Columbia Gorge and Willamette Valley before switching tracks at Eugene onto the Coos Bay Rail Link. Many other communities in the Northwest are threatened with severe health hazards (coal dust leaks and diesel fumes from the increase in train traffic) as coal gets transported through communities in Oregon and Washington by rail, barge, or shipped through the Columbia River Gorge, Portland and towns north.

In today’s world of experts, economists and politicians who intone with somber faces, ‘don’t worry about the risks, we know what’s best for you,’ I have a tendency to lead my arguments for environmental sanity with the infallible “common sense” of economics. Health concerns are always vitally important to me, of course! And frankly, how can we really expect (as the bumper stickers so bluntly summarize) to have jobs on a dead planet? But we don’t usually have to go there when we lead with economic issues. Invariably when I look at the economics of a proposal, it’s not long before the benefit to the very narrow interest of one or more industry–at the expense of the public interest–becomes plain as day. But that does not stop those narrow interests from raising the fear that if we don’t do exactly as they advise the economy will collapse even further and faster than it already has. If we can beat back polluting development proposals that do not meet the public’s best interest using their own measures of value: the dollar and jobs creation, it seems like the easiest path to success.

And so it is, we can all anticipate, with the issue of the endless parade of coal trains slated to rumble through Eugene’s rail yards on their way to Coos Bay for export to supposedly coal-hungry Asian destinations.

OK, so let’s start with economics, shall we?

A report from the Sightline Institute from August of last year shows the West Coast has been down this road before–and not with pretty results. It turns out there is a very significant cost to develop land for coal export. Costs that include severe poisoning of land and water that cannot be easily cleaned up or transformed to other uses should the world wake up to the fact that maybe burning the planet up with C02 is not such a good idea. (I’m really counting on this realization very soon!) And for how many potential jobs? The Sightline report clearly documents that based on our past experience: not many at all.

But if we leave it there, the whole story cannot completely unfold. As with any business decision, it always helps to ask, how else could property be developed to create jobs? In other words, what other developments could provide MORE jobs for a given job creation investment? Isn’t that the kind of common sense we should be applying to development—besides considering the cancer and asthma risks?

The answer from the report is rather sobering: A study at the Port of Baltimore, for example, found that “coal export supports just 0.11 jobs per 1,000 metric tons, as compared to 0.41 for other dry bulk commodities, 0.43 jobs for containerized cargo, and even 1.71 jobs for autos.”

So what happened with past plans for West Coast port projects to export coal? The Sightline report summarizes several past developments that did not consider carefully the use of taxpayer money in sound long-term investment in a stable commodity. The efforts of the Port of Portland in the 80s and the Port of Los Angeles in the 90s are both portraits of broken promises and complete failure. If you add in the very real risks to global climate change represented by the continued use of coal as an energy source, it seems clear that investing in a new infrastructure to ship coal oversees is a wild-eyed gamble not worthy of serious consideration.

In reviewing past port coal development failures in Portland, Oregon and Los Angeles the report concluded that, “The abandoned coal export facilities locked up millions of dollars in stranded investments and clean‐up expenses, not to mention years‐long missed opportunities for more durable economic development choices.” That’s not encouraging. Sadly, when a city or county considers new development, it rarely considers what happens if and when the market for that commodity or product dries up. With coal, the dirtiest fuel on the planet, the consequences are severe and costly!

John Jordan-Cascade,
Communications Manager for Beyond Toxics

See the Beyond Toxics Stopping Coal in Oregon home page for resources and more background on the issue.

Next week: more sobering news about the costs to human health from exporting coal.

See shocking raw footage of a coal train in transit (YouTube) and the trail of coal dust it leaves behind!

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Multnomah County promotes No Idling!

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Multnomah County’s Office of Sustainability announces it’s association with our Healthy Air Oregon campaign to encourage drivers to turn off their engines while waiting on drawbridges this Summer. Together we are raising awareness about the personal and public health risks of idling and cost savings available to individual drivers and businesses of all kinds by ending the practice of idling while not in the flow of traffic.

Read more about Multnomah County’s “Idling Gets You Nowhere” campaign.

The Spirit of Portland is a private cruise company that has various cruises with different sized boats people can take to go site-seeing on the Willamette River. The Portland Spirit is their largest yacht and the route goes under the Hawthorne Bridge, which is a major car drawbridge connecting downtown Portland with the SE side. Because the Willamette River water level has not gone down like it normally does over the summer, Spirit of Portland has had to schedule bridge lifts for the Hawthorne Bridge to be able to pass underneath.  It passes through the bridge 3 times a day, which stops traffic and causes people to idle their cars for at least a mile in each direction. Multnomah County’s Office of Sustainability saw this as a perfect opportunity to remind drivers of the health and environmental risks of idling and the potential cost savings of turning off their engines while they wait. This Summer Beyond Toxics is partnering with the educational effort to raise the issue in the public’s eye.

Find out how you can become an endorser of our Healthy Air Oregon campaign.

EVENTS SCHEDULED THIS SUMMER:

Hawthorne Bridge Outreach # 2
7/27/11 – 2:30 pm – 3:15 pm
Where: Hawthorne Bridge
MORE–>

Hawthorne Bridge Outreach # 3
7/29/11 – 2:30 pm – 3:15 pm
Where: Hawthorne Bridge
MORE–>

ALSO: Multnomah County adopts Vehicle Idling Reduction Policy (PDF file)
Includes this important stipulation:
“Effective immediately, Multnomah County employees shall reduce idling time to no more than twenty seconds in al County Fleet vehicles…”