Extremists need to look at the facts

The opinion, “Sandpoint is facing a ‘coal hard truth,’ ” (Daily Bee, Feb. 12) seems to be long on opinion and short on fact.

First off, Sandpoint currently has in excess of 21,000 trains a year passing through the town efficiently carrying everything from Boeing aircraft fuselages, passenger vehicles and construction equipment to myriad of container and freight cars, tankers and gondolas carrying a diverse list of commodities including grain, lumber, steel, chemicals, petroleum products, and yes, Powder River Basin coal.

Secondly, the railroads have been moving freight through the greater Sandpoint area adjacent to Lake Pend Oreille and the Clark Fork and Kootenai River drainages for more than 100 years and the waters are still remarkably clear and support a great diversity of fish and wildlife indicating that the railroads must be doing something right in spite of occasional accidents.

Thirdly, take a walk along the railroad tracks and one will find that they are well maintained and remarkably free of spillage.

And lastly, there is no alternative method of commodity transportation that could in compete with the railroads on the basis of energy efficiency or environmental safety.

Instead of rabble rousing, these environmental extremists, the 1 percent, should direct their efforts to developing green energy without access to hydro or hydrocarbon energy sources. They would soon recognize that even the clothes they wear let alone the devices they tout as green energy producers can not be made with out access to hydrocarbons, you know coal and crude oil.

RICHARD F. CREED

Sagle