Groups that want a full environmental review of an expansion at a Texada Island coal-handling facility are outraged the B.C. government quietly approved an amended permit without telling local residents or First Nations. The amended permit allows Lafarge to store 800,000 tonnes of coal, double the previous amount. The will enable Lafarge to handle thermal coal from the proposed $15-million Fraser Surrey Docks coal-handling facility. That project, yet to be approved by Port Metro Vancouver, would take four million tonnes of thermal coal annually from the U.S.
Some would call it poetic justice. If we increase thermal coal exports to China, we will not only poison the citizens of Beijing and Shanghai, we will likely contaminate our own air.
Prevailing winds across the Pacific connect us directly with China’s unfolding environmental catastrophe. Indeed, disturbing new studies have found that on some days, up to 25 per cent of Vancouver’s air pollution already comes from China, largely from coal-burning plants.
A new study out of Washington State University suggests the Fraser Surrey Docks coal terminal expansion project would have a major impact on the health of residents living near the facility.
And local academics say the study underlines the fact that approval of the Fraser Surrey Docks project will inevitably lead to increased levels of known carcinogens in the air – particularly in the neighbourhoods adjacent to the terminal.
Up to 82,000 tons of coal ash and 27 million gallons of polluted water have poured into North Carolina's Dan River after a pipe burst beneath a coal ash pond owned by Duke Energy.
"The Dan River is very gray and ashy looking, incredibly dark," Amy Adams of Appalachian Voices told Common Dreams as she stood at the river. "It looks like if you had mixed your run-of-the-mill campfire ash in a five-gallon bucket of water."
The mayor of the Vancouver region municipality of Burnaby speaks out against the environmental review process of the proposed Fraser Surrey Docks coal export terminal.--website editors
The question is: What’s the impact of the coal on aquatic life?
Otto Langer is a retired senior habitat biologist with the federal fisheries department whose experience with coal dates back to 1969 at Roberts Bank near Tsawwassen; he later provided expert testimony in coal discharge cases in the Kootenays and Tumbler Ridge.
He said that metallurgical coal is fractured, with sharp edges — “a bit like glass or crushed hard rock” — and can cause problems if breathed in through fish gills or the lungs of other animals.
ILWU Canada President Mark Gordienko announced December 20 on the waterfront union's website and in the mainstream media the offer of a "$2,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of masked intruders who violently occupied Port Metro Vancouver’s office on Mon
Seven cars of a 152-car coal train moving along CN Rail tracks through Vancouver region derailed yesterday in Burnaby. Three of the cars tipped over and spilled their loads, contaminated the waters of a stream flowing into Burnaby Lake where conservationists have worked for decades to restore the water and spawning salmon from the effects of industrial pollution and urbanization. A sign posted on a protective fence at the creek by Fisheries and Oceans Canada says the waterway is considered a sensitive fish and wildlife habitat and that the area is protected.
The Gateway Pacific Terminal, near Bellingham, Washington, is poised to become the West Coast’s biggest coal export project — but it will no longer have the backing of New York-based, international banking behemoth Goldman Sachs. On Tuesday, Goldman Sachs sold its stock back to the companies proposing to build the terminal, which would transport 48 million tons of coal from Wyoming to Asia annually. Goldman Sachs had a 49 percent stake in the Gateway Pacific project before dropping out.
On Monday (December 16), six “anti-capitalist” Santas from the activist group Rising Tide delivered coal to the private offices of “naughty” Port Metro Vancouver. PMV is reviewing the permit application and consultation process for the proposed Fraser Surrey Docks coal port development. This project would see the delivery of at least four million tonnes of coal by train, and then open barge to Texada Island, to be loaded onto ships and sold to Asia.
