Forum failed to offer meaningful coal facts

As an attendee at the “Coal Hard Truth” forum, I found it to be long on rhetoric and woefully short of facts. It failed to present any meaningful facts on the current traffic on the BNSF line west of Sandpoint or what the increase in traffic is projected to be if a coal export terminal is actually opened in Washington. It failed to mention the safety record of the railroads operating in the area for the past 100 years. It failed to discuss the chemical or moisture content of the coal, (.048 percent sulfur, .013 parts ppm mercury etc.), or that the moisture content is 27.6 percent. Is it possible that the 500 pounds loss per rail car in over the 600 mile route quoted by the Lake Pend Oreille Water Keepers is largely the evaporation of moisture in the coal and not a loss of coal dust?  

Dr. James presentation spelled out the health problems that could be associated with coal dust and diesel smoke generated by any increased rail traffic but made no mention of the fact that we currently have approximately 60 trains a day including four coal trains a day plus several thousand heavy trucks traveling the same corridor day in and out. Why is the virtually non-existent coal dust along the railroads tracks and diesel exhaust, all of a sudden, a great concern?

Finally, the railroad did not introduce the myscis shrimp that virtually wiped out the kokanee population in the Lake Pend Oreille 30 years ago. It did not introduce the northern pike, the small mouth bass, the lake trout, the lake superior white fish or the walleye, all non-native predator species now present in the lake. It did not introduce Eurasian milfoil or the all-too-frequent algae blooms. It did not start the fire that swept the face of the Green Monarchs in 1991.

Protecting the waters of Lake Pend Oreille is a critical to the regions economy. It is also critical that we not make the railroads the scapegoat for past and current mismanagement by over zealous special interests.

RICHARD F. CREED

Sagle