Environmental activists packed the room and waved their ‘red herring’ signs when anyone questioned whether Washington policy could affect coal consumption in China.

TACOMA, Oct. 18 – A hearing on a proposed coal-export terminal in Longview Thursday night proved mainly that there are plenty of strong opinions on the subject – but if you were expecting enlightenment, that was in short supply.

The same old arguments that have engulfed the state ever since coal terminals were proposed in Longview and near Bellingham were sounded again, and again, and again – for three long hours, as activists, labor officials, civic leaders and business figures trooped to the mike. The ostensible reason for the hearing, the last of five convened by the state Department of Ecology and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, was to gather public comment on the scope of a planned environmental impact statement on the Millennium bulk terminal at the Port of Longview. Both sides did their best to pack the room at the Tacoma convention center, and managed to demonstrate that these hearings are more about spectacle than anything else.

“I know that it is called the Evergreen State,” said Puyallup tribal member Robert Satiacum. “It is not the black state, for Pete’s sake. We don’t want [coal] for Christmas, and we don’t want it here. What part of no don’t they understand?”

Karen Harbert of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce speaks at pro-terminal rally.

Said Karen Harbert of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, “The developing world, make no mistake, will use coal. The question is will it be ours or will it be someone else’s? … It is a symbol of whether America is open for business.”

And so it went – arguments about filthy coal and greenhouse gases and the melting of the polar ice caps, arguments about the need for jobs and economic development in one of the state’s most-depressed regions – and every now and then, a word or two about the actual business before the decision-makers.

A key decision is still to come. The Army Corps, reluctant to go beyond the usual site-specific analysis, has announced plans to write a separate environmental impact statement. But if the Department of Ecology follows the pattern established by its decision on the Gateway Pacific Terminal near Bellingham at Cherry Point, it will settle on a wide-ranging focus that could allow state officials to slam the door on shipments of a commodity that is disdained by the green-minded Inslee Administration. The state’s Cherry Point EIS will assess the impact on the global climate of coal shipped from Washington and burned in China, yet there are no plans to consider whether China will burn coal anyway. Would stopping the coal ports make a whit of difference in global warming? The scope of the state review stops short of that question – an indication that science may not be of particular importance in what is essentially a political debate.

Environmental Activists Pack the Room

So much signage you might have thought this was a political event.

By now these cattle-call hearings have started to follow a pattern. Environmental activists and advocates of the coal terminals blitzed the phone lines with calls to their supporters in the days prior to the hearing, reminding them to be there. Both sides staged rallies outside the Tacoma Convention Center before the hearing began, and they handed out T-shirts to those who showed up – red from the Sierra Club’s Power Past Coal campaign, blue from the Alliance for Northwest Jobs and Exports. It made it easy to tell which side had the numbers. Of the 800 or so who turned out, the split appeared to be ten to one against coal.

Eleven-year-old Gabriel Mandell of Seattle reads a way-above-grade-level statement regarding concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

So many showed up that even though speakers were limited to two minutes apiece, officials awarded time at the microphone on a lottery basis, handing out tickets at the door. Three pre-teen children somehow managed to snag winning numbers, each reading oddly way-above-grade-level statements about global concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and warning of dire consequences for their generation. The Seattle ‘Raging Grannies’ gathered ’round the mike to sing “No More Coal” to the tune of “Side by Side.” Activists waved signs whenever they heard something they liked. When they heard something they didn’t – about jobs or the economy or a policy that might not have any particular environmental benefit – they flipped them over to display a picture of a red herring. And the zoo-like atmosphere of the event was heightened by the echo-prone venue, where muddy audio made it difficult to discern a word, unless one was sitting within a few feet of a loudspeaker.

Some 50,000 comments have been received so far on the environmental impact statement process, said Sally Toteff of the Department of Ecology, about 1,100 of them in person at the hearings held prior to the Thursday night event. And if some of the comments are a bit repetitive – they’ll make adjustments. It’s not a popularity contest. “We’re looking for all the comments of substance, and we have to look at those as a base, not in terms of a vote for a popularity approach to a decision.”

And just because the Department of Ecology is taking a hard line at Cherry Point, one should not assume it is a foregone conclusion at Longview, she said. “We want to discourage people from making a jump that what was decided at one project applies to another,” she said. “It may or may not.” Once the department decides on the scope of the environmental impact statement, another round of hearings will be held — and the whole scene will play out all over again, a process that likely will take years to complete.

Killer Windmills

State Rep. Paul Harris, R-Vancouver, and Sen. Tim Sheldon, D-Potlatch, await their turns at the mike.

Maybe there wasn’t anything new to be heard at the hearing, but at least some had an interesting way of saying it. For instance, there was state Rep. Paul Harris, R-Vancouver, who pointed out any environmental evaluation might be jiggered for political reasons. Take wind power, a favorite for environmental groups. “I think a lot of people don’t know that in the last four years, 131 people have died installing windmills. Each windmill has 80 gallons of fossil fuel, oil, in it, and that oil needs to be changed over its lifetime.” Ask questions that aim toward a particular conclusion and you can predetermine the outcome, he argued.

And state Sen. Tim Sheldon, D-Potlatch, said Ecology’s stand at Cherry Point ought to worry anyone in the timber-products business: Essentially it gives state officials the yea or nay over any form of international trade. “This idea of a global focus I think is going to be very detrimental to our business climate in Washington,” he said. “I see the possibilities of this being applied to other industries and export products. For example I am a small timberland owner and occasionally we sell harvested timber. We sell that on an international market. Some of our logs go to China and Japan, but also wood pellets are developed here in the state, very much a new emerging industry — I’m certain they will be exported as well. Will we apply some sort of subjective global criteria to the export of wood pellets? I hope we do not.”

Dick Muri, newly appointed Republican House member from Tacoma, said coal exports to China are one way to assure peace. “They’re going to get their coal from somewhere, so the question is not about burning coal. This is about peace and freedom. Countries that trade together, prosper together, and they don’t go to war together.”

The red-shirted activists snorted in laughter.

Real Jobs, Not Sexy Ones

Mike Elliott, spokesman for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen.

Perhaps the most interesting political element of the debate is that it forces a clash between two critical Democratic constituencies, environmental groups and labor, in a decision that will ultimately be made by the Democratic Inslee Administration. Labor has taken a strong stand in favor of the two proposals; the Cherry Point proposal has received an endorsement from both the state Labor Council and the national AFL-CIO.

Mark Martinez of the Pierce County Building and Construction Trades Council noted that the Millennium terminal will create about 1400 direct construction jobs and about 1400 indirect jobs in a county with a 10 percent unemployment rate. “Unfortunately, the jobs that I am talking about, especially in construction, are not the nice sexy little green jobs that everybody thinks they want. What they are are the old-fashioned, hard-work middle-class union jobs that pay a family sustaining wage, that have health care benefits that won’t be subsidized by the government, and they have pensions that will allow retirees to live in dignity. As construction workers we have taken the brunt of this past recession; we still continue to have high unemployment in our ranks. And investments like the Millennium terminal and the other export facilities that have been proposed will bring back that work so we can put our folks back to work and start achieving the American dream that everybody wants.”

If Washington shuts the door on exports of coal from the Midwest, it appears clear that British Columbia is eager for the business, said Mike Elliott of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen. “They are preparing to take the coal we turn away, so if we don’t build the projects here, they will build them in Canada and they will ship the coal anyway, so what would we lose? We lose the jobs, we lose the tax revenue, and we lose the future of our business opportunities in those two locations. So we really need to think about this. We are really in a situation where we are almost cutting off our nose to spite our face here.”

Coal Equated With Drugs

Mary Anne Hitt, national director of the Sierra Club’s Power Past Coal campaign.

And then there were all the arguments from environmental activists about the concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere and the need to make a moral statement with an environmental impact statement. Left unaddressed was the effect of Washington-state policy on coal consumption on the other side of the world. A woman who identified herself as a recent graduate of Pacific Lutheran University – her name was garbled by the P.A. system – drew cheers when she said, “Allowing coal exports would be like saying, ‘I won’t do drugs, but I will sell them.’”

Mary Anne Hitt, national director of the Sierra Club’s Power Past Coal campaign, called the decision on the Longview terminal pivotal in the fate of the world. “We are the last generation of people who have a chance to stop climate change,” she said. “You can listen to the tens of thousands of people who have attended hearing after hearing to call on you to stop these coal export terminals. You can demonstrate the leadership on climate that this nation and the world are desperately seeking.”

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