— by John Stang for Crosscut.com —
Oil Train protestors show up for U.S, Army Corps of Engineers hearing. Photo courtesy of John Stang.
The fate of a Cherry Point oil-loading dock. Distrust of BP. A minor oil-car derailment in Seattle. All of these surfaced Thursday at a hearing in Seattle.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers held the public hearing to discuss a draft environmental impact study of a dock for oil ships built in 2001, a project that did not go through such an analysis at that time.
Increased train traffic — coupled with fears about a spurt of oil train fires — has helped to spark public concerns about coal and oil going through Washington by rail.
On Thursday evening, 35 people testified at a federal facility in south Seattle against expanding use of the North Wing dock at BP’s Cherry Point facility, which is receiving and refining Bakken oil from North Dakota. The North Wing dock was built in 2001 to join the older South Wing dock in order for BP to ship greater volumes of oil. The lack of an environmental impact study in 2001 led to years of litigation, eventually forcing the Corps to examine how well the North Wing dock built in 2001 should handle the volumes of oil and number of tankers facing it in 2014.
(to read the full story, go to https://crosscut.com/2014/07/24/environment/121172/crowd-protests-oil-trains-bp-operations-cherry-poi/?utm_source=Crosscut+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=d773b8dd50-Crosscut_Daily_Newsletter_7_25_20147_25_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_efe7a35aed-d773b8dd50-261886866
