Power of the People: The ongoing fight against oil-by-rail interests

By Alexander Harris, Washington Chapter Conservation Organizer

EFSEC Hearing

What happens when the largest oil-by-rail terminal in North America is proposed along the most important river west of the Mississippi? A community transforms and bands together in ways they did not know was possible. This is the story of Southern Washington’s fight against the most powerful and unyielding kind of corporate power — big oil.

Southern Washington faces a proposal by the Tesoro and Savage corporations, to send four-mile-long trains down the Columbia Gorge each day. These trains would carry 360,000 barrels of oil per day, which means this project alone would transport 42 percent of the capacity of the Keystone XL pipeline.

This amount of oil, when burned, would generate enough greenhouse gas emissions to register on the global scale — an estimated .1 percent of the world’s total. These environmental threats are combined with the risks of derailment and explosion; the impact statement predicts one derailment of a loaded oil train every two years.

Public meeting draws more than 1,000 people

Southern Washington residents have come out in force to oppose the project. On Jan. 5, 2016, more than a thousand people showed up to the first hearing held by the permitting agency known as the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC). The room was filled with red shirts (representing opposition to the oil-by-rail terminal) and testimony against the project made up over 80 percent of all testimony given during the 11-hour hearing.

EFSEC hearingHalfway through the long day, the opposition crowd, which was made up of groups ranging from longshoremen to firefighters to tribal members to small business owners, gathered in a cold warehouse to celebrate their growing movement. By the end of the rally, the warehouse no longer felt so cold.

A week later, an equally diverse group of community members arrived at yet another hearing, uniformly clad in their red shirts. During the six-hour hearing, testimony was given on concerns over public safety, climate change, environmental risks, and threats to the local economy. When hundreds more showed up to the third hearing in Spokane, it was readily apparent that Southern Washington was determined to stop this project.

By the end of January, more than 2,000 people had participated in one of the three hearings and the coalition against oil trains had generated over 289,000 written comments (easily breaking the previous record of comments sent to EFSEC).

Community leadership

Community leaders such as Dan Serres of Columbia Riverkeeper and Don Steinke of the Beyond Coal and Oil Task Force have been praised for their tremendous dedication and, after months of hard work, success seems to be imminent. The community has spoken and their message is crystal clear: the power of the people must triumph over corporate interests.