ROCK AND
A HARD PLACE
ously polluted. An estimated
17 percent of pregnant Native
American women already have
mercury levels high enough to
disrupt the healthy development
of their babies — much higher
than other racial groups.
Deposits of the neurotoxic heavy
metal, along with arsenic and other contaminants from coal-fired
power plants, can accumulate up
the food chain and into salmon.
Research further suggests that
around 25 percent of the mercury
in Northwest American waterways
and up to 10 percent of the ozone
in the region’s skies is carried by
wind currents across the Pacific —
from power plants in Asia.
Coal exports could pollute the
region in other ways. Perhaps most
talked about are the risks of heavy
metal-laden coal dust and diesel
exhaust blown and belched from
trains, terminals and ocean-going
tankers. Derailments, such as the
one that sent seven cars spilling
coal into a British Columbia creek
last month, raise further fears, as
does the possibility of bunker fuel
spills once tankers set out to sea
through narrow, rough passages.
In November, Dan Jaffe, an environmental scientist at the University of Washington-Bothell,
HUFFINGTON
02.09.14
released preliminary results of a
study on the environmental insults of existing coal train traffic.
His team monitored 450 passing trains — some carrying coal,
some not — from two representative sites. They sampled for about
10 days at a spot on the Columbia River Gorge and for about a
month near a Seattle home that
butts up against railroad tracks
currently used by trains en route
His people continue to struggle
with poverty and an unemployment
rate he suggested is upwards
of 50 percent. “And the U.S. cries
over its 8 percent,” he said.
to Canadian coal ports. Jaffe said
he confirmed elevated levels of
diesel exhaust there “on par with
the dirtiest air in the Seattle
area,” as well as a slight increase
in large airborne particles — likely coal dust, he said — when coal
trains passed by.
The three proposed terminals
would dramatically increase rail
traffic, bringing some 35 additional mile-plus-long trains in
and out of the region every day.
Currently, fewer than 10 coal
trains come and go.