Re: [blind-democracy] Northwest Tribes Band Together to Stop Oil-by-Rail

How blind are those who refuse to see? Or perhaps their blindness is
due to the shine off the piles of gold.
The best definition of Bully that I can think of is: One whose bottom
line is everything you have.
Capitalism, especially what is now Corporate Capitalism must be set
aside for a more equitable system.

Carl Jarvis


On 7/25/16, S. Kashdan <skashdan@scn.org> wrote:
> Northwest Tribes Band Together to Stop Oil-by-Rail
>
>
>
> By Ralph Schwartz
>
>
>
> YES! Magazine Sunday, July 24, 2016
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>
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> http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/36952-northwest-tribes-band-together-to-stop-oil-by-rail?tmpl=component&print=1
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>
>
> There's no such thing as a good place for an oil-train derailment, but this
>
> year's June 3 spill outside Mosier, Oregon, could have been worse if the 16
>
> oil cars had derailed and caught fire even a few hundred feet in either
> direction. The derailment was just far enough away from populated areas,
> including a nearby school and mobile home park, that no injuries resulted,
> and the amount of oil that spilled into the river was limited. If it had
> happened another mile-and-a-half down the tracks, the damaged tank cars
> would have tumbled directly into the Columbia river during the peak of the
> spring Chinook salmon run.
>
>
>
> "This derailment right along the Columbia River is... a reminder that oil
> trains mean an ever-present risk of an oil spill into our waterways,
> threatening fisheries and livelihoods for Quinault Indian Nation members and
>
> our neighbors in Grays Harbor," Quinault Vice President Tyson Johnston
> said.
>
>
>
> There are massive oil train ports planned for Anacortes, Grays Harbor, and
> Vancouver in Washington state. They have not yet broken ground, but if they
>
> ever do get built, the indigenous tribes that need healthy salmon to sustain
>
> their communities got a preview of what could go wrong.
>
>
>
> The communities that live and fish along the Northwest's most important
> waterways have been working to bring these proposals to a screeching halt.
> "Proposed crude oil terminals in Grays Harbor are a threat to our treaty
> rights to fish in our usual and accustomed places," Johnston said. "Our
> safety, way of life, and economic future is on the line."
>
>
>
> The 96-car train that derailed in Mosier was headed to Tacoma from the
> Bakken oil fields. Bakken oil train traffic to the West Coast spiked from
> practically nothing in 2012 to almost 200,000 barrels a day at the start of
>
> 2015, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
>
>
>
> While production in the Bakken fields is off its late-2014 peak, terminal
> developers are betting on the long-term prospects of oil pumped from the
> Bakken region and from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada. If the proposed
> facilities for Anacortes, Grays Harbor, and Vancouver ever operate at full
> capacity, that 2014 peak for crude oil by rail will look like a drop in the
>
> bucket:
>
>
>
> * In Grays Harbor, Westway Terminal's proposed expansion would outfit the
> company's port to move crude oil from trains onto ships. The crude oil
> terminal could bring in nearly five trains per week to the harbor.
>
>
>
> * In Vancouver, the proposed Tesoro-Savage oil terminal would be the largest
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> rail-to-vessel shipping facility in North America. It would bring in another
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> 36 loaded trains per week, or about 360,000 barrels of oil.
>
>
>
> * In Anacortes, the Shell Refinery aims to build out a rail loop and
> additional unloading equipment in order to facilitate six more oil trains
> weekly than it already handles.
>
>
>
> Significantly, weeks before the Mosier derailment, the Lummi Nation in the
> coastal northwest corner of Washington won a years-long battle against a
> massive coal export terminal proposed for the tribe's shores.
>
>
>
> Gateway Pacific Terminal (GPT), a project of marine shipping corporation SSA
>
> Marine, would have been the largest coal export facility anywhere in North
> America, large enough to handle 48 million metric tons of coal annually. It
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> had the backing of two major players in the Powder River Basin coal
> industry, Peabody Energy and Cloud Peak Energy, to build a 3,000-foot-long
> wharf extending into waters fished by generations of Lummis.
>
>
>
> Burning the coal proposed to ship through GPT would have produced 96 million
>
> metric tons per year of carbon pollution. Even the unburned coal at the
> terminal would have posed spill risks to the local aquatic ecosystem, an
> important economic, cultural, and spiritual resource for the Lummi Nation.
> An environmental impact analysis, begun in February 2014, had been
> slow-moving and its outcome uncertain.
>
>
>
> How did the Lummi stop Gateway Pacific? They took a bold and unusual stand
> in January 2015, when they asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to protect
>
> their right to fish their "usual and accustomed grounds and stations," as
> written in the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott. Treaties are powerful legal
> instruments with the force of federal law and the potential to preempt
> inconsistent state laws. If successful, they would win a decisive,
> precedent-setting victory. A failure would open the door to weakening treaty
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> protections.
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>
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> After 16 months of increasingly well-organized and visible public opposition
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> to the project, the Corps decided the tribe was right: The coal port would
> impede tribal fishing practices. The Corps rejected SSA Marine's application
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> to build the pier.
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>
>
> The victory resounded throughout the region, increasing support and
> bolstering the resolve of other tribes embroiled in their own energy
> development battles.
>
>
>
> "Today was a victory not only for tribes but for everyone in the Salish Sea.
>
> I hope we are reversing a 100-year trend of a pollution-based economy, one
> victory at a time," Brian Cladoosby, chairman of the Swinomish Indian Tribal
>
> Community and president of the National Congress of American Indians, told
> the Seattle Times.
>
>
>
> "The Corps' decision is a victory for the Yakama Nation and all other treaty
>
> tribes," JoDe Goudy, chairman of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the
> Yakama Nation, said in a written statement. "The fight, however, is not
> over. The threat of the coal movement remains, and the Yakama Nation will
> not abide these threats."
>
>
>
> Sure enough, the Yakama have joined with the Confederated Tribes of the
> Umatilla Indian Reservation and others to protest the massive Tesoro-Savage
>
> oil-by-rail terminal proposed for the banks of the Columbia River in
> Vancouver. In contrast to the Lummi, the Umatilla and Yakama are willing to
>
> let the environmental review process play out before taking overt action to
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> protect their treaty rights.
>
>
>
> In 2014, both tribes asked that the environmental impact statement (EIS) for
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> the Tesoro-Savage project consider impacts to treaty rights. However, as the
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> Lummi fight illustrated, treaty rights may be considered separately from the
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> EIS, which remains the centerpiece of any major environmental review and is
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> intended to outline all the potential environmental problems and ways to
> handle them.
>
>
>
> Still, Yakama officials clearly rejected the notion that impacts to their
> land and treaty rights could be mitigated. "To be clear," wrote Chairman of
>
> the Yakama Nation Tribal Council Harry Smiskin in a 2014 comment to the
> Corps, "Yakama Nation will not negotiate nor agree to so-called mitigation
> for any violations or actions resulting in the diminishment or destruction
> of its treaty-reserved rights."
>
>
>
> Cladoosby, the Swinomish chairman, struck the same note in a statement to
> the media earlier this year about the GPT: "There is no mitigation. We have
>
> to make a stand before this very destructive poison they want to introduce
> into our backyards. We say no."
>
>
>
> In another tactic, the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community sued BNSF Railways
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> in April last year for violating a contract between the tribe and the
> railroad that limited the length of trains that passed through the Swinomish
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> reservation to 25 cars each and required the tribe be informed of changes in
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> cargo. The Swinomish had learned from the media that BNSF was delivering
> crude oil on trains with 100 cars or more to the Shell and Tesoro refineries
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> in Anacortes.
>
>
>
> The tribe won an early decision in the lawsuit when a federal judge denied a
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> BNSF motion to bring the issue before the Surface Transportation Board. The
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> case is properly heard in federal court, the tribe said in a September 2015
>
> statement, "The STB has no jurisdiction over tribal rights."
>
>
>
> It's worth noting the basis for the Corps' decision in the Lummi case. While
>
> the Lummi Nation was prompted to make its request to the Corps by a vessel
> traffic study that concluded the coal port would bring 487 more vessels
> through the tribe's fishing grounds, the Corps did not rely on busier
> vessel-traffic lanes through Lummi fishing territory to make its decision.
> Instead, it referred only to the disruption of fishing that would occur at
> the dock site itself--about 122 acres total.
>
>
>
> While the main area of concern for the Yakama and Umatilla is away from the
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> proposed Vancouver oil terminal site--their main fishing grounds are the 150
>
> miles of the Columbia River between Bonneville Dam and McNary Dam--the
> Quinault Indian Nation fishes out of Grays Harbor, where it has notable
> success fishing where ships would dock at the Westway expansion.
>
>
>
> That fishing spot would be disrupted. The completed draft EIS for Westway
> describes how tribal fishers would need to either work around the increased
>
> number of vessels or fish elsewhere. But here's an important legal point: In
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> the Lummi Nation's case, the Corps' Colonel Buck found that just going
> somewhere else to fish, as long as the tribe could hit its catch quota, was
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> not an adequate protection of treaty rights.
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>
>
> Tribes are not confronting fossil-fuel projects alone and in a vacuum. They
>
> have been sharing resources and lobbying together in Washington, D.C., to
> oppose the many fossil-fuel projects proposed for the Pacific Northwest.
> "Working with the Lummis and seeing what they've gone through with the Army
>
> Corps of Engineers was definitely helpful, because it sets a precedent,"
> said Johnston, the Quinault Indian Nation vice president.
>
>
>
> Unlike the Lummi, the Quinault approach has been to focus the fight at the
> state rather than the federal level. Even with the different approach, the
> Quinault tribe believes the Lummi decision "bolsters and strengthens the
> position we have," Johnston said.
>
>
>
> Could the Lummi Nation's assertion of treaty rights be a magic bullet other
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> tribes could use to stop fossil-fuel projects?
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>
>
> "There's no direct answer to the question, except--maybe," said Robert
> Anderson, director of the Native American Law Center at the University of
> Washington School of Law. "The Cherry Point decision rested on evidence of
> direct interference with Lummi fishing by increased shipping traffic (at the
>
> terminal). The less direct the connection between such interference and
> environmental harm, the more difficult any case will be."
>
>
>
> For the Lummi, fishing is such an integral part of their identity that they
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> decided to sidestep the long, drawn-out EIS process and pull out all the
> stops to save their way of life. The Quinault, Umatilla, and Yakama appear
> willing to see the environmental reviews for Tesoro-Savage and Westway
> through to the end.
>
>
>
> If this approach seems more conservative, keep in mind the Lummi strategy
> was risky. If the decision had been appealed in federal court, a judge
> somewhere down the line could reverse the Corps' ruling and, by doing so,
> unravel some of the treaty protections the Lummi Nation and other tribes
> rely on for their survival.
>
>
>
> "I definitely think there should be concern from all tribal leadership
> because we don't know what the results would be if it went to a higher
> court," reflected Lummi council member Jeremiah "Jay" Julius a few days
> before the Corps released its decision.
>
>
>
> But even a setback for treaty rights through a decision by, say, a
> conservative U.S. Supreme Court wouldn't be daunting for the Lummi Nation,
> said Darrell Hillaire, a former tribal chairman. "You think that this one
> issue is going to extinguish that belief? No, it's going to strengthen us."
>
>
>
> Like other tribal members interviewed for this article, Hillaire takes a
> long view, both when looking forward and looking back. He pointed out that
> White settlers thought they might eradicate Lummi members after the
> introduction of alcohol and smallpox, or force them to assimilate after
> sending Lummi children to boarding schools where they couldn't learn their
> own language. Hillaire said Lummi believe they are survivors.
>
>
>
> The Lummi Nation showed remarkable unity in its opposition to the terminal,
>
> which helped members get through the long fight. Likewise, other tribes are
>
> united in opposition to fossil fuel projects across the region. Whatever the
>
> end game might be for tribes such as the Yakama and Swinomish, there's a
> sense that the tide is turning in their favor. Hillaire sees the current
> times as empowering for tribes.
>
>
>
> "What we have now is an emergence," he said. "Not just Lummi, but there are
>
> a lot of First Nations people--their culture and their social structures,
> their government itself... they're all emerging. I think they see that as a
>
> continuation of their sacred responsibility."
>
>
>
> RALPH SCHWARTZ worked for 13 years at newspapers in north-central and
> northwest Washington. He covered the Gateway Pacific Terminal proposal for
> The Bellingham Herald, which he left in November 2015. He now works as an
> environmental consultant and freelance writer, and lives in Bellingham.
>
>
>
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