Letters to the Editor, Opinion Coal, oil pose health, safety risks
There is a present and future danger in the Columbia Gorge which all of your readers should consider. There are already coal and oil trains passing through the Columbia Gorge — almost all on the Washington side of the river.
Coal travels in open cars and about a pound of coal dust per mile is lost from the those trains. Besides getting into the river and causing pollution that coal dust settles in the ballast supporting the tracks, makes it slick and causing it to shift — increasing the likelihood of derailments.
Proposals now being considered would increase coal train traffic by 20 trains per day, greatly increasing the amount of coal dust getting into the ballast. Also planned is an oil terminal in Vancouver, which will bring four 100 car oil trains per day through the Columbia gorge on the tracks made unstable by the coal trains.
Oil train derailments are devastating in that they almost always result in fire and explosions which have carried debris up to one-half mile from the wreckage site. Even without fire, a derailment in the Gorge would dump tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil into Gorge waterways and contaminate acres of Gorge lands.
The proposals being considered, if approved, represent a significant threat to health and safety, to life and limb. They are also a threat to the economic well-being of communities in the Gorge in that the National Traffic and Safety Board says that under present law local communities, not the railroad, would have the responsibility for cleaning up after any derailment. They would have to provide fire and emergency services as well. Through mutual aid agreements, fire and emergency services on the Oregon side of the river would be involved in any major derailment. No Gorge fire department is equipped or trained to deal with an oil train fire or a coal train derailment in a Gorge community or alongside a major highway.
