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Consultant in NCRA Rail Takeover Bid Says Project Has Been Misrepresented, But Document Reveals Coal Connections and Wiyot Tribe Involvement

Justin Wight, an independent consultant working for the recently formed North Coast Railroad Company, LLC, says the corporation’s plans have been misrepresented.

“It’s not as it has been made to appear to most people,” he told the Outpost in a phone interview Monday.

Our conversation with Wight came on the heels of a story in the Salt Lake Tribune that reveals details of a March conference call between government officials in Utah, Wiyot Tribal Administrator Michelle Vassel, two representatives of the coal industry and Wight himself.

Vassel previously denied to the Outpost that the tribe had received or accepted any proposals related to coal, and U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman said she’d told him the same thing, “unequivocally” denying that the tribe would support this rail line takeover effort.

The email suggests otherwise. “Both Justin [Wight] and Michelle [Vassel] stated there is strong local support for revitalizing the harbor and port operations,” it says. “Michelle mentioned she would expect some, but not overwhelming opposition to the project.”

Numerous calls and emails to Vassel over the past few weeks have not been returned.

The Humboldt Bay Harbor District is already preparing to take action to block their plan. Harbor Commissioner Stephen Kullmann said he’s not sure if the board will pass an ordinance or take some other approach, but he’s working on something that will have “as much teeth as possible,” he said.

Kullmann said the mysterious project backers “seem to have the idea that they can do it without any local buy-in, that they can force their will through. I highly doubt they’ll be able to do that.”

McGuire reiterated his determination to block the project. “We will fight this at every level and make damn sure this ridiculous idea goes away,” he said.

Utah port authority memos reveal coal industry ties to California rail controversy

The Utah Inland Port Authority worked behind the scenes exploring a secretive proposal to rehabilitate an unused California railroad with the hope of using it to ship Western-mined coal overseas through an out-of-the-way port on the Northern California coast, according to internal documents obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune.

In March, six months before the rail project came to public attention, a Utah port authority staffer named Christopher Mitton participated in a conference call with two coal industry representatives, an administrator from a Northern California tribe and a man named Justin Wight, identified as the “project consultant.” The call’s purpose was to discuss taking over the North Coast Railroad and develop an export terminal at Humboldt Bay. The project would have complete, or at least majority, tribal ownership.

The industry representatives on the call were Conrad “CJ” Stewart, energy director for the Crow Nation, and Utah Mining Association president Brian Somers. The Crow of southeast Montana holds extensive coal reserves in the Powder River Basin. Joining them on the call was Michelle Vassel, tribal administrator for the Wiyot, a federally recognized tribe that is indigenous to Humboldt Bay.

The Wiyot Nation is “fully committed to this project” and the Crow Nation is “looking for any new export channel or new use for their mineral resources,” according to the memo that Mitton sent to Flygare, the port authority’s chief operating officer.

Vassel did not respond to a request for comment left at the Wiyot tribal offices in California. Stewart did not respond to a voicemail left on his cellphone. Somers could not be reached and contact information for Wight was not available.

“There would have to be a massive increase in dredging to create the kinds of depths at the shipping channels and then also to open the entrance year-round,” Kalt said. Meanwhile, the facilities on the site, all associated with Humboldt’s faded timber industry, are in no shape for handling mass volumes of coal or other bulk mineral commodities.

But one remains in fairly good condition and occupies the harbor’s deepest water, she said. It’s a privately owned facility called the Fairhaven Terminal, where the water is 38 feet deep and there are five acres of paved storage. A message left for that terminal’s owner, Eureka businessman Rob Arkley, was not returned.

The Inland Port memo indicates the bay has existing federal shipping channels that would work for exporting minerals. Wight identified terminals on the north side of Humboldt Bay that could be used for loading ships and are not close to environmentally sensitive areas.

“Both Justin [Wight] and Michelle [Vassel] stated there is strong local support for revitalizing the harbor and port operations,” the memo said. “Michelle mentioned she would expect some, but not overwhelming opposition to the project.”

Vassel could have hardly been more wrong in this assessment.

“No way, no how are we going to let this happen,” said Sen. McGuire in unveiling key additions to his SB307 on Tuesday.

The legislation would ban any state funding from being used to improve the northern half of the rail line for coal shipments north and from being used to build a coal handling terminal at Humboldt Bay.

Northern California officials roll out opposition to coal train specter

Elected officials are introducing resolutions and even a statehouse bill opposing a mysterious proposal to ship coal up to Humboldt Bay on both existing and defunct rail lines. The flurry of measures came even though no new information has surfaced about who is behind the coal shipping proposal, which came to light in late August through filings with the U.S. Surface Transportation Board, a federal agency that oversees freight rail shipping. U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, and State Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, have said the newly created North Coast Rail Company intends to ship coal from Wyoming and Montana’s Powder River Basin by rail for ultimate international export out of Humboldt Bay.

McGuire estimated the North Coast could one day see as many as four trainloads of coal, each a hundred cars long, per day, with four empty trainloads returning. He reached the estimate using current commodity prices to calculate how much coal a company would have to ship to meet a minimum return on investment that would be demanded by federal railroad regulators before they would approve such a venture, he said.

With coal declining as a global energy source and a steep investment required, officials put the minimum cost to rebuild just the rail line higher than $2 billion. That does not include the cost to build out a coal shipping port in Humboldt Bay. It also doesn’t include the expense of fighting an extended legal and public relations battle in a region firmly opposed to coal and dedicated to climate change mitigation politically.

Those factors led at least one energy industry expert to say the prospect was economically unwieldy.

“It’s the longest of long shots,” said Seth Feaster, an analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

A wave of resolutions by local governing bodies oppose the proposal. The Transportation Authority of Marin passed a resolution against the idea on Sept. 23. The Novato City Council and the Marin County Board of Supervisors are set to consider similar resolutions in coming weeks. The Mendocino Board of Supervisors passed a resolution in opposition on Sept. 15, as did the Ukiah City Council.

Members of the Windsor Town Council, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors and Santa Rosa City Council all told The Press Democrat this week they would be bringing their own proposals, as elected members of bodies up and down the SMART line rush to indicate their opposition to even the slightest possibility of long trains of coal chugging through the North Bay.

“There is just no way in hell that citizens of Sonoma County, with it going through the Eel River Canyon and it being coal, with long trains through the heart of our communities all for an outdated carbon fuel source … I just can’t imagine anyone being supportive of this idea,” Sonoma County Supervisor David Rabbitt, the current chair of the SMART board of directors, said Friday.

As the nation and much of the world continues to move away from coal-fired electricity, a shift driven by climate change concerns and the rise of renewable energy and domestically by cheap natural gas, investors are increasingly shy about backing coal schemes, analysts say. The fact that the shipping project here would take several years at a minimum to get off the ground only adds to the challenge.

“These are very speculative adventures, and if there was a good market case to do this you would see more development than there has been and you would see significant exports out of Vancouver, and you just don’t,” Godby said.

Help stop the coal rush

Op-Ed by Bruce Silvey, Humboldt Trails Council - Eureka Times Standard

As outlined by The Times-Standard article “Lawmakers Oppose Coal Plan” on (Times-Standard, Sept. 8), and the Lost Coast Outpost article “Aiming to Ship Coal Out of Humboldt Bay, Shadowy Corporation Makes Bid to Take Over NCRA Line” on Sept. 2, there appears to be a serious move to derail the Great Redwood Trail and replace it with toxic coal trains to run down the fragile Eel River Canyon to a terminal at Humboldt Bay. The goal is to ship millions of tons of this climate change-inducing product to Asia where it can be burned for energy before all the coal-fired plants are finally shut down.

To capture these eleventh-hour profits, a new railroad associated with the coal companies in Utah, Montana, and Wyoming plan to rebuild the dilapidated NCRA line for substantially less than the $2.4 billion NCRA estimates it will cost. Since private railroads can preempt state laws, they would not need to meet any of California’s environmental laws as they rebuild collapsed tunnels and washed out track along the unstable Eel River Canyon, or around Humboldt Bay. According to the documents filed by their law firm with the Surface Transportation Board, they have $1.2 billion in funding behind them, and they expect to have “high-volume shipments”.

Why Humboldt Bay, which would require major dredging and retrofitting to accommodate a bulk transfer terminal to load coal on huge ships? These same coal shipments have been blocked by six ports on the west coast between Coos Bay, Oregon and Bellingham, Washington. Their last appeal was against the Washington State Department of Ecology permit denial for an export dock on the grounds that it would cause “irreparable and unavoidable” harm to the environment. The appeal of this denial was just dismissed by the US Supreme Court in June of this year.

A June 28 news release by the Washington Environmental Council announcing this Supreme Court Decision states “Multiple courts at the state and federal levels have now held that Washington State was within its rights to protect citizens from elevated levels of air and water pollution that would have come with transporting coal through its communities.” It further credited this accomplishment to “an unprecedented coalition of tribal nations, health, environmental, faith and community groups from across the Pacific Northwest and High Plains.”

The loss of the Great Redwood Trail would be a lost opportunity for the entire North Coast, including economic, environmental and health improvements. Coal on the other hand does “unavoidable and irreparable” harm to our environment, health and way of life. Imagine for a moment 100-car coal trains rumbling down the middle of First Street in Old Town Eureka multiple times a day, or conveyer belts dropping loose coal into bulk transport ships with carcinogenic coal dust in the air and on the water.

There is already a coalition of organizations pulling together that include environmental, transportation, trail and community groups. If you belong to an organization that can join in, please see that they do. The City of Oakland, California, passed an ordinance to prohibit the storage and handling of coal to block a coal terminal on their shore.

You can help advocate with the county, cities, and Harbor District to direct their legal staff to research ordinances or regulations that can block toxic coal before there is even a specific proposal, AND before they grab the Eel River Canyon out from under the NCRA. Visit links at https://humtrails.org to see other actions you can take to help stop this toxic coal rush.

Sen. McGuire bill would ban state funding for coal terminal on Humboldt Bay

State Sen. Mike McGuire introduced new legislation to block a proposal to restore the defunct North Coast railroad in an attempt to export coal overseas from Montana, Utah and Wyoming through the Port of Humboldt Bay.

McGuire called the proposal “one of the largest environmental threats the North Coast has seen in decades.”

McGuire said, "This critical bill will ban any state funding from being invested to improve the rail line for coal shipments north of Willits and it bans any state funding to build out a potential coal storage terminal at the Port of Humboldt. No way, no how are we going to let this happen.”

SB 307 would “prohibit spending state monies for any new bulk coal terminal project, as defined, within the County of Humboldt,” according to the text of the bill. “California should do everything it can to put a stop to anything that supports the use of coal, and tampering with the plans for this trail, which will go through some beautiful North Coast country, is not welcomed,” said Assemblymember Jim Wood (D-Santa Rosa).“California should do everything it can to put a stop to anything that supports the use of coal, and tampering with the plans for this trail, which will go through some beautiful North Coast country, is not welcomed,” said Assemblymember Jim Wood (D-Santa Rosa).