— by Floyd McKay for Crosscut.com —
Environmental reviews of a coal-export terminal that would be the largest in the nation were summarily suspended on April 1 — but it was no April Fool’s trick for the developers of Gateway Pacific Terminal or local, state and federal agencies working on the protracted review.
A small army of scientists, researchers, bureaucrats, politicians, environmentalists and business executives are sitting on their plans, waiting for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to define a tiny Latin term: de minimus. It is tied to questions over whether the project would harm Lummi Nation fishing.
Indeed, pushed by an impatient Lummi Nation to enforce 19th Century treaty rights that guarantee fishing in “usual and accustomed places,” the Corps is boxed in. On one side are sophisticated and well-funded tribal leaders, who know Indian law to the last phrase; on the other, angry but powerful coal-country Republican congressmen, who fear their chances to export coal to massive Asian markets will be shut off.
