COAL FREE SKAGIT VALLEY
Attend the Beyond Coal Volunteer Meeting in Your Community
Every month the Sierra Club, along with the Power Past Coal Coalition, hosts Beyond Coal volunteer meetings in numerous communities to plan events, update one another on outreach activities and have a good time kicking coal out of Washington. You will meet other like-minded people and find out what you can do to protect our community from dirty and dangerous coal trains.
When: 1st Thursday of every month, 6:30 pm—8:30 pm
Where: Skagit Valley College Room A-125 2405 E College Way, Mount Vernon
Why should the Skagit Valley care about a proposal to build coal terminal at Cherry Pt. near Bellingham? Because the resulting coal train traffic that would travel
through many communities in Washington, including Standwood, Conway, Mount Vernon, Burlington, Sedro Woolley, and Bellingham.
We care because each of these places stands to lose due to traffic delays, awful health impacts due to coal dust and diesel exhaust, the disruption of businesses, loss of property values, shattering train noises, and those same nasty pollutants covering farmlands and waterways.
We do not want the Skagit Valley to become a cluster “coal train towns” -- dingy from the dust and exhaust and struggling economically, even more than today, because businesses won’t do well if they are near the rail line and homes will be much less appealing if they are too close.
Around the clock noise, increased diesel air pollution, road traffic delays, interruptions of passenger train schedules, environmental degradation, and decreased property values cannot be "mitigated." Big corporations' profits shouldn't be allowed always to take precedence over our community values.
In picturing the noisy, dusty coal trains rumbling pass the cities, forests, fields, and waterways of the beautiful Skagit Valley on their way to a giant shipping terminal at Cherry Point, we wonder about what
type of planet my our children and grandchildren will be experiencing. If future generations are to have a chance of knowing a friendly, inspiring, nourishing planet, we need to work to make sure that the Powder River coal stays in the ground.
Our collective heart aches for our hard working union members, because we fully support well-paying jobs and the protection that unions provide. There are better ways to create living wage jobs in the clean energy sector. Downtown Mount Vernon wants to renovate the area along the Skagit River and Bellingham wants to reclaim an old industrial area for parks, businesses, and light industry. But proximity to the rail lines put these projects in jeopardy -- and the large number of living wage jobs that would come as a result.
We need to create a strong local economy that is healthy to both people and our natural resources. In contrast to this need, the Cherry Point Terminal’s coal train traffic would damage our hope for a strong community because it would threaten the health of businesses, people and ecosystems along the tracks. We need YOUR help to fight this proposal because if we don’t we are forfeiting our ability to create a positive future for our community and our children.