The Gristle
Coal dustups
COAL DUSTUPS: With environmental scoping now looking to begin this fall, the big set pieces align for the dispute over the proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal at Cherry Point.
The state Dept. of Ecology updated their estimate that the environmental scoping could begin by late August for a proposed pier that might ship as much as 54 million tons of coal per year to Asian markets. Whatcom County Council negotiated a 120-day period for public hearings and comments in preparation for a more comprehensive review of the proposal.
What is scoping? In a nutshell, scoping sets the size and scale of environmental review, what elements should be included in that review and—importantly—what should be excluded. For practical cost containment, the project applicant, SSA Marine subsidiary Pacific International Terminals, Inc., has suggested the scope be confined to the Cherry Point environs and a switchyard at Custer. A growing coalition demands the scope be broader and more inclusive of potential impacts along the rail corridor through Puget Sound.
In a now familiar pattern, San Juan County Council last week voted to request the scoping include the islands and surrounding waterways be included in the environmental study. Skagit County commissioners had earlier similarly voted to request the scope consider their sensitive lands and economy. They join Spokane, Seattle, and Vancouver, Wash., city governments in calling for detailed impact studies that look at environmental, health and local transportation issues. The City of Edmonds took matters further last November, opposing the movement of coal trains through their city.
Bellingham City Council struggles to find their voice.
Council failed in their June 2 meeting to adopt the city’s call for comprehensive review, desiring to stuff their resolution with sufficient citations to make their request as comprehensive, inclusive and formidable as possible. They will take up the matter again next week. Council also agreed, after listening to lengthy public testimony, that they will not impede a citizen’s initiative seeking to ban coal trains from going on the November ballot, deferring the issue to voters…
...after the city first finishes suing the initiative, of course.
The Gristle has noted some of the perplexing aspects of Proposition 2, the Coal-Free Bellingham initiative, which extends legal rights to Nature and authorizes any Bellingham resident to sue the city on behalf of those rights.
“Courts could take this to mean that if you live in Bellingham a local environmental group could sue you because washing your car in the driveway put soap in the storm drain, or a neighbor could sue you because your use of weed killer denied a plant’s right to flourish,” warned Paul Guppy, Washington Policy Center’s vice president for research. The proposed law provides for the recovery of legal costs, providing financial incentives for lawyers to sue the city, he cautioned.
To pound the nail of coal transport, Prop 2 takes a sledgehammer to the federalist model.
Doing so exposes the city to potential financial harm, City Council member Michael Lilliquist warned in an impassioned letter to Coal-Free Bellingham supporters.
“Prop 2 is practically designed to create a constitutional showdown between local and federal government—but that’s not what most people are concerned about,” Lilliquist argued. Instead, “we need a healthy showdown between the rights of citizens to protect themselves and the rights of businesses to conduct harmful operations under legal shield of permits.
“Prop 2 creates the wrong conflict between the wrong parties,” he emphasized. “It puts the city government in harm’s way, and will do little of practical effect to stop the coal train and shipping terminal.”
Lilliquist and other Council members believe they have a duty and an obligation to avoid exposing the city to costly lititgation—particularly, he noted, when such litigation challenges federal aurthority as described in the U.S. Constitution. The merits of Prop 2 will be heard by a Whatcom County Superior Court judge later this month.
“It is clear that City Council is stymied by their position which requires them to both uphold the current law and change unjust laws,” Coal-Free Bellingham supporters admitted in an unusually candid press release. “They listened attentively and respectfully, but did not back down from their decision to challenge the initiative in court rather than allow it to be placed on the ballot.”
“There’s really no need here to emphasize the power and control that profit-driven corporations have had in the design and construction of a system that favors commerce over the very people affected by that commerce,” Prop 2 sponsor Rick Dubrow said, arguing that Council’s approach accommodates rather than opposes the GPT proposal. “In essence, that system places the rights of those corporations over the people of Bellingham by restricting what the municipal corporation can, and can’t do; and by making the municipality liable to private corporations who have a different future vision for our community.”
Coal-Free Bellingham this week filed a countersuit, a motion to strike the City of Bellingham’s lawsuit against the group, arguing the city’s action is a harassing lawsuit intended to injure their right to direct democracy.
“Because the city’s action is an attempt to block the people’s right to vote, we are bringing a claim under the state’s anti-SLAPP law so that the people of the city will get to have the vote that they are entitled to under the city’s own initiative procedure and state law,” said attorney Brean Beggs, representing Coal-Free Bellingham.
“Right now, local governments, including ours, have been assigned the role of enforcing corporate control,” said Coal-Free Bellingham steering committee member David Maas, a retired professor of political science. “In bringing the lawsuit, the city is fighting to maintain that system of anti-democratic corporate rule—against the interests and desires of the people of this city.”
“The restoration of democracy in America needs to come about not through a weakening of our Constitution,” Lilliquist argued, “but through a re-assertion of citizen control over federal government.”
blog comments powered by Disqus
