Success! Washington Coal Export Facility Application Withdrawn

The clean air in Longview, Washington will remain that way, at least for now.  Millennium Bulk Terminals, a subsidiary of Australian coal company Ambre Energy, withdrew its permit application to build the United States’ first West Coast coal export terminal last week.

More than 300 Change.org activists signed a petition to complement the efforts of environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and concerned local citizens to fight the project.  EarthJustice represented those groups in a legal appeal of the terminal’s project permit.

Even as advertised, the proposed project was a bad deal for Longview residents, but it turns out that Millennium Bulk Terminals had more sinister intentions than they we willing to let on.

Time and again, Millennium assured residents and government officials that the facility would export to China only 5.7 million tons of coal per year – approximately as much coal as the entire state of Washington burns.  That was already enough to raise serious concerns about the health risks of coal dust and significant traffic while waiting for coal trains to traverse the area.

Internal documents and emails now show that Millennium was intentionally deceiving state officials about the size of the project.  In reality, they were actually planning to build a facility that would export up to an astounding 80 million tons of coal each year – nearly 15 times what the company had publicly claimed.

Why lie?  As one company official wrote, “We are [at] too sensitive a juncture to raise the plans to build a second berth.  The community is small and the risk to the current permit path is too large.”  In other words, they knew Longview was uneasy with the scope and nature of the project even at fraction of its true size. Better, they decided, to get an established toehold in the small city of 36,000 to gain the leverage to subsequently force an unwanted expansion.

Thanks to the tireless efforts of activists and documents revealed in the legal challenge, this plan was uncovered before it could be perpetrated.  Congratulations are in order.  Yet while we have won this battle, the war is far from over.

Domestic coal companies are determined to feed the booming Chinese market.  Millennium says it will file another permit after further study, and a similar facility is still being proposed in Bellingham, Washington.

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Photo credit: Vxla via Flickr