Washington state refuses to allow coal export terminal, in legal battle with 6 states

 

Washington State via the court will try and stop the coal export terminal. This is a federal port. Just another in the list of judges who will put their nose into it. Stopping utility lines, laying pipelines and improving refineries, – don’t even consider building a new one. But forget the impact of the huge solar panels that fry birds in an instant. Wind farms that are equally as devastating. A wink and a nod to them. The list is endless. They would have us go back to being Hunter-Gatherers. First some history and what we need to remember at this election time, and then will include here what the wacko birds are trying to do. In this case, stopping exporting coal and costing thousands of jobs.

Keep in mind: There are 400 coal-powered electric plants in the United States. They generated 30 percent of the nation’s electricity.(Jul 31, 2015)  Some states like Ohio, 54 percent comes from coal.

McCarthy: “The hicks in flyover country were too stupid to understand that we were doing them a favor by killing their jobs”.

 

 

 

Recall this? This one says it all:

EPA Chief: ‘Hicks in flyover country too stupid that we were doing them a favor killing their jobs

January 10, 2017 

She implement controversial environmental regulations such as the Clean Power Plan (CPP) — which are viewed as job-killers in coal country — and told reporters earlier this year that she gave up talking to “climate deniers.”

“I don’t check out flat Earth society and I’m not talking to climate deniers,” she said in October. “That’s it. Sorry, I know I’m supposed to be for everybody, but my patience has worn thin over eight years.”

 

Trump repeals coal mining regulations, signs legislation

In case we wonder why we elected Trump, and what will happen if we don’t support the man in November by electing conservatives. I give you a few of what we were up against and lucky for us, Trump won:

 

 

EPA ‘clean coal’ rule would increase power prices by 70 or 80 percent

February 12, 2014

Barack Obama: “Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” (January 2008)

An Obama administration official has said that the new clean coal rules could increase electricity prices by as much as 80 percent.
Dr. Julio Friedmann, the deputy assistant secretary for clean coal at the Department of Energy, told House lawmakers that the first generation of carbon capture and storage technology would increase wholesale electricity prices by “70 or 80 percent.”
The Obama administration’s plan to fight global warming includes limiting carbon dioxide from new power plants. In order for new coal-fired power plants to be built, however, they would need to install costly carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.

Hillary Clinton ‘We’re going to put coal companies out of business’

March 14, 2016

 

 

Top EPA official Obama’s “coal regs will be painful all of the way”

June 5, 2012

Obama’s war on coal hits our electric bill

May 23, 2012

EPA shuts down one of the largest Coal Mines in U.S.

January 14, 2011

It is the first time in the agency’s 40-year history that it has canceled a federal water permit for a project after it was issued.

The EPA noted in its own press release that it was asserting a rarely used authority

Obama’s promise to bankrupt coal industry to cost 1,000 jobs in upper Midwest

June 28, 2010

 

Now the latest:

A lawsuit has pitted six landlocked states against Washington State over a simple question: Who owns the federal ports?

Washington State is denying the states the permits required to build a large coal export terminal along the Columbia River. The states have sued and Washington filed a motion for dismissal.

But U.S. District Court Judge Robert Bryan rejected Washington State’s motion, setting the stage for a legal showdown over who really gets final say over which products flow through the nation’s sea ports.

“We’re talking about the Constitution and the rule of law,” said Montana Attorney General Tim Fox, “One state can’t discriminate against another state’s commodities in this way.”

Montana and Wyoming are leading plaintiffs and two of the largest coal-producing states in the country. The Powder River Basin contains 2.5 billion tons of recoverable coal and currently supplies 40 percent of the coal used in the United States. But as many states wean themselves off of electricity from burning coal, coal companies are looking to boost exports, primarily to Asia. But they have a major problem: there are no ports along the West Coast currently set up to load coal onto ships.

Four other states, Kansas, Utah, South Dakota and Nebraska, have joined the lawsuit against Washington State.

The Millennium Bulk Terminal, proposed for the port in Longview, Wash., was supposed to solve that obstacle. It was designed to export 44 million metric tons of coal a year. Important allies and trading partners Japan and South Korea were eager to buy the coal. But after conducting an environmental impact study, the state of Washington denied the terminal a required water permit.

“I think we’re on sound ground,” said Washington’s Democratic Governor Jay Inslee, “because we’re enforcing our environmental rules for clean air and noise and some other issues.”

Snip…

“It is insulting to all Washington residents that proponents of this facility have chosen to minimize and ridicule the impact diesel emissions from the largest operation of the largest coal export facility in North America would have had on the people of Cowlitz County,” said Ecology’s spokesman Dave Bennett.

But Governor Jay Inslee makes no secret of his disdain for coal. In his 2007 book, “Apollo’s Fire: Igniting America’s Clean Energy Economy,” Inslee wrote, “coal is killing us. If we fail to restrain growth of CO2 emissions all six billion of us on this little spaceship are at risk.”

He also wrote that coal and cars are in a race to be the greatest danger to our climate. And at a recent news conference in which he announced Washington state would file its 32nd lawsuit against the Trump Administration over the dismantling of president Obama’s Clean Power Plan, Inslee said: “We’re breathing smoke from Mississippi, we’re breathing smoke from the rest of the United States. We have an interest in reducing coal smoke from all over the United States.” More at Fox News