To: Interested Parties
Fr: Dan Leahy
Re: Inslee's Draft Marine and Rail Oil
Report: A Study in Mis-direction.
I've waded through the October 1st
draft of Governor Inslee's study. I do find it extremely insulting
that there is no mention of the significant statewide municipal,
community, farm, union and tribal opposition to his proposed oil
terminals, expanding oil refineries, explosive oil trains and the
misuse of our public ports.
I've come to believe that the only
force capable of saving our land, labor and commonly held resources
is an alliance of sovereign tribes, organized labor, farmer unions
and community based resistance groups working in concert with their
local governmental jurisdictions.
Hopefully the Spokane and Olympia
hearings on the 28th and 30th will build
toward this alliance.
How Can Inslee's Study be Used?
The study can be an opportunity to
create a love fest for the “beleaguered green governor” who
pleads that he has no authority to regulate rail and wants us to back
a doomed legislative agenda to expand agency study budgets while oil
terminals get approved, oil refineries get expanded, and our rail
system is turned into a permanent carbon corridor for the export of
Alberta tar sands and Bakken crude.
Or, the study can be an opportunity to
present a sharp critique of Inslee's refusal to support community
demands by opposing state sponsored oil terminals, expanding
refineries and a state bureaucracy collaborating with BNSF's mission
to export through our public ports global pollution from the broken
earth of Northern Alberta and North Dakota.
What's the purpose of Inslee's
Study?
Mis-direction. It defines the
problem as a federal issue and calls upon the US Coast Guard and the
Federal Railroad Administration to do something. The USCG actually
regulates marine traffic, but the FRA is an industry dominated entity
with the current capability of inspecting less than 1% of rail
activity and a policy of imploring railroads rather than regulating
them. Calling upon the FRA to
regulate rail would be like calling upon BNSF's owner Warren Buffett
to stop making money. It's not what they do.
Worse,
the study's authors wait until the very end of the report (p. 82)to
tell us that “... the potential ways in which the crude by rail
system and the increase in port activities with new facilities
affects tribal treaty rights, the environment and the regional
economy” are “ancillary”and not the “direct topic” of the
study.
This
study process is attempting to cap the direction of our movement and
trade our future for a false climate agenda based on mitigating at
the margins.