In southern British Columbia, we have a potential environmental disaster on the horizon.
A direct-transfer coal terminal is planned for Surrey on the banks of the Fraser River. Trains carrying coal from the U.S. will dump their loads at this terminal, to be loaded on to barges. The barges will be towed down the river and along the coast for transfer to freighters at Texada Island. The ships are destined for far-eastern buyers.
This coal is mined from seams up to 100 feet thick in the Powder River Basin deposits in Wyoming, where 388 million tons of low-sulphur thermal coal was produced in 2012 for electricity-producing coal-fired furnaces in the United States and around the world. One hundred trains composed of up to 150 hopper cars per day, each over half a mile long move this coal out of the basin.
BNSF Railway estimates that five to 32 tons of coal dust and chunks are deposited on the landscape on a 400-mile trip. Although the use of coal to produce electricity has declined in recent years in the U.S. due to stricter air-quality standards and the conversion of many electric plants to natural gas, China continues to burn massive amounts in coal-fired plants.
Powder River coal coming into B.C. for export is carried on the BNSF line from Wyoming, through southwestern Montana, northern Idaho, into Washington, then up the I-5 corridor into B.C. A total of 320 trains per year are planned, resulting in twice that many barge trips.
The BNSF railway is owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, an American company.
Development of Fraser Surrey Docks facility has received the go-ahead from Port Metro Vancouver (PMV), which is the federal overseer for terminal operations - this despite considerable local opposition from environmental groups, First Nation leaders and most of the directors of Metro Vancouver.
Nearby communities are especially concerned about the various environmental and health problems. Procedures at Fraser Surrey Docks (FSD) will involve unloading the rail cars onto covered conveyor systems and/or storage pits or enclosures. Loading of barges is similarly by conveyor system. FSD also proposes installation of dust-suppression systems and installation of equipment for treatment and disposal of any wastewater produced.
As a result of PMV concerns, original plans for emergency coal stockpiling have been eliminated, and dust-suppression procedures are planned for the trains halfway between the mine and the terminal and immediately prior to barge transfer.
FSD and PMV have gone to considerable expense in attempts to allay the fears with regards to human health hazards and environmental damage, through the contracting of presumably neutral consultants. Even if all these assurances are believed and FSD can be relied on to follow through with its proposed safe practices, there will be damage. Coal dust will escape into the air and water, and will be consumed in varying degrees by people, land and marine animals, and fish in the Fraser and along the coast.
So, U.S. coal will be carried on U.S.-owned trains and French-owned barges involving an Australian-owned Fraser Surrey Docks terminal and the French-owned Texada Island Transfer Terminal, eventually to be burned by non-Canadian users in Asia.
What do Canada and B.C. get out of the arrangement?
At best, about a hundred jobs.
At worst, a whole mess of pollution and future health problems. Am I missing something or is this as bad a deal as it appears?
--Guy Allen is New Westminster resident and a professional geologist who has worked in the mineral and oil and gas industries. Find him at www.talismanpublications.com.
