Like many Native Americans, Navajo Elder Pauline Whitesinger lives in squalor. As a member of the Navajo nation, she is also part of America’s largest and poorest tribe who were prohibited from building for 43 years under federal legislation known as the Bennett Freeze. Although the ban was lifted in 2009, the recent recession dried up all sources of federal funding.
Rebuilding could begin soon for Elder Whitesinger, thanks to funding from Knobs for Navajos, a new crowdfunded campaign created by Cabinethardware.org.
“The abysmal living conditions of the Navajo community were brought to our attention through the story of Pauline Whitesinger and we were moved to help,” explains Cabinethardware.org founder David Mason. “We created Knobs for Navajos with the goal of raising $10,000 to assist local non-profits help families affected by The Bennett Freeze. Knobs for Navajos chose Elder Whitesinger as its first grant recipient. If successful, she will be able to build her own hogan, the traditional Navajo dwelling, on her native land.”
Cabinethardware.org is turning the traditional business model on its head by merging the crowdfunding concept with its successful e-commerce site, Kitchen-Cabinet-Hardware.com. This means that anyone who shops on its site can designate 10 percent of their total purchase to a featured project. The project must receive 100 or more votes to qualify for assistance.
“We are a home improvement site, so it’s only natural that the way we give back is to help those in need improve their homes. By shopping on our site, you can renovate your own home and at the same time help others at no additional cost to you,” Mason continues. “We believe in doing good for others while you’re doing good for yourself.”
About CabinetHardware.org
CabinetHardware.org is an e-tailer home improvement store that sells top brands of cabinet knobs and pulls, kitchen and bathroom décor, accessories and home organizers. It is a division of Tail of the Lion, Inc., which operates on the ancient principle that it is ‘better to be a tail to lions than a head to foxes.’ The lion represents the great, inspiring and principled leaders of our times. As a small business, we strive to be amongst them. We run a fun, family-friendly business where honest values are our priority.
Emerging as a complete surprise, the wave of massive demonstrations Brazil has been experiencing is undoubtedly the most serious movement of popular protests in the country since the dictatorship years. On June 10th, 2013, the first peaceful demonstration took place in São Paulo, near one of the main business streets, Avenida Paulista. After mobile phone videos spread across the internet, showing clear evidence of the violent repression of the protest by the military police, masses of people hit the streets of São Paulo in a cry for their right to demonstrate.
For the first time, young Brazilians saw the military police, renowned for violent actions around the poorer or isolated areas, attacking and arresting hundreds of economically privileged citizens. Despite the efforts from the largely conservative national media to play down the violent actions, a number of key videos were recorded in different areas of the city on the 13th of June and virally spread through social media. These videos showed how groups of protesters chanting for “no violence” were indiscriminately attacked by the extensive use of tear gas, rubber bullets, batons and pepper spray. Victims of the repression included journalists shot at head level and in their eyes.
The acts were mainly organized by ‘Movimento Passe Livre’ (Free Fare Movement), a group campaigning against public transport fare rises since 2005 and struggling for the right to ‘free fares’ for all citizens to travel on public transport in Brazil. A similar measure was first proposed in 1990 by the former São Paulo PT mayor, Luiza Erundina, who had to face the so-called ‘bus mafia’ as well as a chain of reactions from big businessmen from the construction and retail sectors in the city.
The first protests, in São Paulo, marked the beginning of what Marilena Chauí, philosopher and retired lecturer at University of São Paulo (USP) affirms to be a ‘very important political moment’ for the development of Brazilian democracy. On June 18th, the streets of various cities were taken over by crowds, and that same evening the National Congress building in Brasilia was surrounded by protesters, taking a combination of artistic and political action.
“Oscar Niemeyer [a well-known Brazilian architect and socialist] would have been so proud last night! The unity of art and political action! His beautiful congress building decorated and enhanced by a new generation of radicals on the roof, demanding change, an end to corruption and no more collaboration with the greedy FIFA (International Federation of Association Football)Mafia,” wrote Andrew Jennings in A Pública.
The images of the police repression in São Paulo seem to have represented the last straw for the over one million people that have taken to the streets and mobilized around the country. However, at the same time, protesters have been similarly repressed in Brasilia, Fortaleza and Minas Gerais outside the football stadiums where the Confederation Cup matches have taken place.
The protesters’ indignation around the stadiums are based in part on the exorbitant ticket prices – which means that ordinary Brazilians will not be able to attend the events. People are also outraged at the use of the billions of public funds for the cost of stadiums and facilities. According to one calculation, this cost is the equivalent of the R$38 million federal education budget and, to a lesser extent, the countless cases of human rights violations against populations living near the stadiums or other sports facilities, who have been evicted, often violently, to make away for the ‘improvements.’
Natalia Viana, director ofA Pública, the main center for investigation and independent journalism in Brazil, declared in a recent interview with the Chilean outlet America Economíathat around 170,000 people have been at some point under risk of losing their homes because they are in the way of the World Cup or the Olympic projects, stadiums, and highways. “The city [mainly Rio de Janeiro, but other areas have also been affected] is being changed in a very authoritarian way, without competent and democratic consultation or negotiation with all communities,” Viana explained. In addition, the economic abuses related to those projects have also spread around the country. Rio’s Maracanã stadium alone has gone through three sets of major refurbishment works in the last 15 years, at a total cost of around US$700 million, and the Brasilia stadium is costing about US$ 270 million, one of the most expensive of the six being built ahead of the World Cup warm-up tournament.
Even though both the Governor of São Paulo state, Geraldo Alckmin (PSDB), and the Mayor of São Paulo city, Fernando Haddad (PT), announced on June 19th the reduction of the public transport fares, the next day activists in 322 cities and 22 capitals were mobilized around the country.
On June 21st, the president Dilma Rousseff, a former leftist guerrilla who was tortured under Brazil’s long military dictatorship, made a televised 10-minute appearance backing the right to peaceful protest but sharply condemning violence, vandalism and looting from the protesters. In contrast, Rousseff notably ignored the police’s violent action during the first days of protests in São Paulo, or around the stadium in Brasilia and other capitals. She even ignored previous and, unfortunately, common-place conflicts such as the constant clashes in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas or with Indigenous people around the Amazon region, conflicts related to soy production and cattle farms in Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul states. The giant may have woken with these recent protests, as some have claimed, but those on the margins of Brazilian society have never gone to sleep…
A recent opinion poll indicates that Brazil’s Federal government has considerably lost popularity over the last two weeks. According to Gilberto Maringoni, journalist and PhD in history from the University of São Paulo, those numbers do not attest to anything exceptional. However, he alerts, Brazil is currently on the edge of a crisis; even though the levels of consumption and employment are not falling, he affirms, in macro-economical terms, the Brazilian GDP promises to be ‘mediocre’ by the end of the year.
During the years of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula), the previous president, many Brazilians experienced the consumer power for the first time in their family history. Those previously on the edge of the market economy could now buy a TV, a car, a refrigerator, and other basic consumer goods. However, outside their homes people still find a decaying public service system, high cost and bad quality transport, lack of books, equipment, and motivated teachers at public schools, a very poor health system, and growing levels of violence around the cities.
“Brazil has improved significantly over the last 10 years. However, the environment is still being destroyed, chaos is taking over the cities, there is no sign of agrarian reform, the mainstream media is associated with the Federal government, the financial sector carries on demanding a radical shift towards [neoliberal] economic orthodoxy and Dilma [Rousseff] is wholeheartedly following her creed of privatization,” Gilberto Maringoni wrote recently in Carta Capital.
Many analysts have expressed their hope that this current uprising is a sign of the general public awareness that political change is desperately needed in Brazilian politics. At the same time, people are concerned that 2013 doesn’t end the same way 1968 did in Brazil, when student protests were brutally crushed by the military government.Furthermore,Werneck Vianna, a renowned Brazilian social scientist, said: “If nothing is done in time, this movement could end in a very bad way. […] young people disenchanted with politics, radicalized and who will look for the wrong ways to solve their problems.”
The extraordinary demonstrations in Brazil, which have practically taken over all big cities, and are active in many in rural areas, have been showing to the Brazilians, and to those interested to learn about this Latin American giant, the complexity of its political condition. After numerous days of protesting, many people still did not know exactly why they were protesting. This lack of focus and political maturity is just a symptom of the distance between the population and Brazilian politics.
In a letter signed by over 30 Brazilian social movements to president Dilma Roussef, these groups analyze the recent mobilizations as a very positive step in a process of political education of the mostly young demonstrators. It is, they affirm, a cry of anger from people who have been historically alienated from the political life of Brazil, and who tend to think of politics as something damaging to society. The letter explains that this movement will likely lead youth to realize the desperate need to confront the powerful in Brazil, demanding economic equality and reforms, and greater access to healthcare, education, land, culture, media and political spaces. In the letter, the social movement groups also affirm that the conservative sectors of the society are trying to co-opt the demonstrations and spin their meaning to the media.
Connected through the internet and different social media platforms, people around Brazil and abroad have also been protesting in solidarity with Brazil, and tying the protests there to other mobilizations around the world. Both Turkish and Brazilian activists, (who have been attacked by the same brand of tear gas), have been sharing much of their experiences online, such as how to make D.I.Y. masks against tear gas, and sharing images of protests signs in support of their counterparts across the world. Solidarity demonstrations have also been organized in different cities around Europe and the US, where we could see both Turkish and Brazilian flags raised.
Eliane Brum, a Brazilian journalist, writer and documentary maker, has recently recalled the words of the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, recorded on video around two years ago during the widespread protests in Spanish against economic austerity measures. Galeano’s message to the young people who went to the streets of Barcelona, Madrid and other cities in the country was translated into many languages and shared extensively online: “This shitty world is pregnant with another one.” Just like Brum, many people are hoping Galeano is correct, and that we can all exist in another kind of world, where there is space for life.
Despite efforts by the U.S. government to exterminate the bison as a way to exterminate the Indian, the bison persists, if fragily. Now, a museum devoted to the great animal is open in Rapid City, South Dakota.
The Museum of the American Bison and Great Plains Center is dedicated to telling one of the most captivating stories in our nation’s history – the amazing survival of the American bison. While a sad saga of greed and profiteering that changed the lives and traditions of people over a century ago, the story of the bison today is one of hope and resiliency.
The Museum of the American Bison is a non-profit organization run by a volunteer Board of Directors consisting of community members with history and wildlife conservation backgrounds.The museum charges no admission fee.
Anger and despair as disaster strikes small community
John Rieti, CBC News
As the truck rattles to a stop, Siksika Chief Fred Rabbit Carrier looks out over the flooded community of Chicago Bridge where houses sit amid floodwater like islands.
Severe flooding has forced around 1,000 Siksika people from their homes on the Alberta reserve, a large portion of which hugs a stretch of the Bow River about 100 kilometres east of Calgary. The disaster has been unfolding there since Friday, when the river poured over its banks and covered some areas with over a metre of floodwater.
“How are we going to recover from all of this is what went through my thoughts,” Chief Rabbit Carrier told CBC News on Sunday.
“There’s a sense of hopelessness… as a leader you have to overcome that and put emotions aside and start working toward the recovery.”
Chief Rabbit Carrier said the community is still in a state of emergency. The reserve’s recreation centre has been turned into a shelter where a list of items — baby formula, diapers, towels, blankets and non-perishable food — are in high demand. The phone in the centre’s main office rings constantly.
“We’ve been very fortunate that we have not lost anybody,” Chief Rabbit Carrier said.
In the lobby, a group of volunteers hoping to rescue animals trapped in the flood gets organized. They’ve already saved several animals, but plenty of barn animals and pets alike have perished. “If it has a pulse, we’ll save it,” one volunteer said.
First Nation feels forgotten
Sally Fox, who has lived on the Siksika reserve for her entire life, refused to go to the emergency shelter, opting instead to sit at a makeshift campsite on the hill overlooking her flooded blue house.
Chicago Bridge resident Sally Fox set up a makeshift camp overlooking her flooded home where she’s been since Friday.(John Rieti/CBC)
“I hope the house is OK,” Fox said, “but I fear the worst.”
As she looks out, her husband and grandson trudge up the flooded front driveway. It’s the first time since Friday the water’s been low enough in her community of Chicago Bridge to survey the extent of the damage.
While Fox is stoic about the fate of her house, she’s furious with the lack of media coverage.
“It was all about the Saddledome, they forgot about us,” Fox said.
Chief Rabbit Carrier, while pleased by the presence of several news crews on Saturday, agrees. “We had to beg for coverage,” he said.
People on the reserve are “angry” he said, that the media focused so heavily on Calgary’s clean-up while people in Siksika were fighting to save their homes.
The message today, expressed clearly by everyone here is this: Siksika needs help.
Homes lost
In Little Washington, there’s almost a kilometre-wide swath of flowing water still covering the community. Residents say it could be weeks before the community is dry. Even then, most of the 45 houses here likely won’t be saved.
Some 45 homes in the community of Little Washington have been severely damaged.(John Rieti/CBC)
Ratford Black Rider lost his house, three cars and a school bus in the flood.
“The water came in so fast, we only had less than half an hour to get what we can out,” he said.
The four Siksika communities — a popular golf resort on the reserve was also destroyed — hit hardest all sit on low-lying land, nestled beneath foothills. Little Washington residents checking on their homes said there has been some flooding in the past, but it’s never been more than a little water in the basement — not even during the major floods of 2005.
Today the water is still moving quickly, gushing over a cracked Little Washington road on its way toward Medicine Hat.
Chief Rabbit Carrier says he hopes his community can get into “recovery mode” in the next 24 hours. But he said he hopes when the water subsides, people don’t forget about Siksika.
Charlene Nelson, Shoalwater Bay Tribe chair and Guy Miller, Skokomish Tribe chairman, finalize the Skokomish Tribe’s purchase of water quality lab equipment from the Shoalwater Bay Tribe.
Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission
The Skokomish Tribe is upgrading its water quality lab to a state-of-the-art facility.
The tribe recently purchased high-end water quality lab equipment from the Shoalwater Bay Tribe to conduct more sophisticated work, such as looking for cancer-causing compounds.
“It’s a major deal for Hood Canal,” said Ron Figlar Barnes, the Skokomish Tribe’s EPA coordinator. “It’s an opportunity for tribes within Hood Canal and Puget Sound to have close access to this type of equipment and help everyone. We’re bringing high-end water quality equipment to a more centrally located area.”
The Shoalwater Tribe used the equipment to research toxins causing reproductive issues with its tribal members. The tribe tested a variety of sources, including water, soil, tissue, marine animals and finfish, looking for compounds that are toxic, such as flame retardants and PCBs.
“We haven’t had a need for it lately though, so now we’re able to pass it on to someone else,” said Gary Burns, director of Shoalwater Bay Tribe’s environmental program.
Without the new equipment, the Skokomish Tribe could test water samples only for dissolved oxygen, e.coli, phosphorus, nitrate, nitrite and ammonia The tests help alert the tribe to any potential water quality problem in the Skokomish River and potentially Hood Canal. The tribe still has to send off water samples to be tested for fecal coliform but hopes to do it in-house in the future.
“Once the advanced lab is set up, which is expected to be within a year, the tribe will be able to expand testing to include fish and shellfish tissue,” said Figlar Barnes.
“We’re not going to limit ourselves,” said Guy Miller , the Skokomish Tribe Chairman. “We’re going to use it in every way we can to help our people, our community and our natural resources.”
Despite widespread community support for keeping the name, Port Townsend High School in Port Townsend, Washington will drop its Redskins name and mascot. The Port Townsend School Board voted unanimously last night to make the change, according to the Associated Press.
The school board’s decision was made on the recommendation of a study group that found that the name was offensive to Native Americans and it should be retired. But this didn’t sit well with the nearly 300 people in attendance last night, with many routinely cheering speakers who opposed the name change and booing those who took an opposing view, reports the Peninsula Daily News.
Eight people locked themselves to construction equipment early on Monday June 24 to inaugurate what the Tar Sands Resistance group has dubbed Fearless Summer, a series of protests against the Keystone XL pipeline and Alberta oil sands development in general.
Nine people were arrested in the civil disobedience action, according to NewsOK.com, chaining themselves to a work trailer and construction equipment outside Seminole, Oklahoma. By 9 a.m. much of it was over, with four people who had been chained to an excavator detaching themselves “for their own safety,” NewsOK.com reported.
“Eight individuals blocked construction of a pump station for TransCanada’s controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline on Seminole land-by-treaty by locking on to equipment in the largest action yet by the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance,” the group said in a statement. “The group took action today, physically halting the construction process, as a part of an effort to prevent the Great Plains from being poisoned by inherently dangerous tar sands infrastructure, as well as demonstrate the necessity for direct confrontation with industries that profit off of continued ecological devastation and the poisoning of countless communities from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf,” the group said. This action comes during the first day of a nationwide week of coordinated anti-extraction action under the banner of Fearless Summer.”
Keystone XL is up for a decision this year, with the final environmental report still pending. Construction of pieces of the project has begun already, in anticipation of full approval.
Famed tightrope walker Nik Wallenda last made headlines in June 2012 by tightrope walking across Niagara Falls. This year, he’s headed for a remote section of the Grand Canyon on the Navajo Nation—which also happens to house a site held deeply sacred by the Hopi and other tribes.
The Discovery Channel will air the stunt live on June 23, as Wallenda tightrope walks higher than he’s ever attempted before—1,500 feet above the Little Colorado River near its confluence with the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. His walk over Niagara Falls was only 200 feet off the ground. There’s another difference: he wore a safety harness over Niagara Falls, but will not do so over the Grand Canyon. That’s allowing publicists at the Discovery Channel to advertise the stunt as a “nail-biting” event, and “one of the most daring and captivating live events in history.”
Navajo Nation Parks and Recreation officials say they welcome the event as a chance to showcase their portion of the Grand Canyon. The tribe operates two viewpoints along Highway 64, which runs west from Cameron, Arizona to the Grand Canyon’s oft-visited South Rim in Grand Canyon National Park.
“Our visitation in this part of the Canyon is very low,” said Geri Hongeva, Navajo Parks and Recreation spokeswoman. “We would like families to come visit this area someday. There’s a lot of history; there’s a lot of culture there. We don’t have the budget to reach out to 13 million viewers. This is a great opportunity for us.”
Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly is also excited for the spectacle, said his spokesman, Erny Zah.
“He’s happy that Nik wants to come here,” Zah said. “There’s going to be a worldwide audience that’s going to have the ability to see what we have to offer on the Navajo Nation. Any time we can take the spotlight for a little while and showcase our land, he’s definitely excited about that.”
Not everyone is as thrilled. Leigh Kuwanwisiwma, director of the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office, said his biggest concern is a cultural one. The Hopi Tribe has identified the Little Colorado River Gorge as a significant clan migration route.
“The Gorge and the Canyon are not about taking lives,” he said. “They’re about life, especially the spiritual lives of our ancestral people.”
Kuwanwisiwma said when a base jumper died in the area last year due to a parachute failure, it presented a cultural burden to the Hopi people—and, he suspects, to the Navajos living nearby.
“We were told that this guy is not wanting to wear a safety harness,” Kuwanwisiwma said. “What if he does fall? It’s another cultural dilemma for the Hopi people.”
For Wallenda, 34, his boldness represents a meaningful personal conquest.
“The stakes don’t get much higher than this,” he said in a Discovery Channel press release. “The only thing that stands between me and the bottom of the canyon is a two-inch thick wire.”
Wallenda said the event will be the fulfillment of a lifelong dream to walk at such a great height as well as a chance to honor his great-grandfather, the legendary Karl Wallenda, who died after falling from a tightrope in Puerto Rico in 1978.
Kuwanwisiwma said there have been other concerns about the approval process for the stunt on the Navajo side. Despite a 2006 agreement between the two tribes to honor each others’ cultural and religious sites, there wasn’t so much as notification—much less consultation—before the event was permitted.
“That didn’t make us too happy, that we had to learn about it ourselves,” he said.
Nevertheless, the permit has been granted and the date has been set. Hongeva said the Navajo Nation Park and Recreation Department will have to follow the lead of Discovery Channel security teams, and assist in keeping the public away from the actual location. Spectators will be allowed to congregate at Navajo Tribal Park near Cameron, but space will be limited. She’s advising fans to show up no later than noon to watch the 6 p.m. walk. Once Wallenda begins, he’s expected to finish in about 40 minutes.
Nik Wallenda looks out at the Grand Canyon, where he’ll walk the tightrope without a safety harness in June. (Courtesy Discovery)
Trains would feed growing, but much smaller, terminals in B.C.
Jennifer Buchanan / The Herald A coal train passes through Everett in May. Proposed export terminals would increase the number of trains between Seattle and Bellingham.
Bill Sheets, The Daily Herald
If coal export terminals proposed for the Pacific Northwest are never built, the number of trains rumbling through Washington state filled with coal would still increase.
Coal is already shipped from British Columbia, and terminals there are expanding.
Based on projected numbers, however, those increases would not come close to equaling the combined capacity of the terminals proposed for Cherry Point near Bellingham and two others in the Northwest.
Opponents of building coal export terminals in Washington say they would bring traffic congestion from the number of trains, and generate coal dust and greenhouse gases.
Supporters say Cherry Point will create jobs — 4,400 temporary, construction-related jobs and 1,200 long-term positions, according to SSA Marine, the Seattle company that wants it built.
If Washington says no to the terminal, coal trains will still come through Western Washington, but the jobs will go north to Canada, SSA Marine spokesman Craig Cole said.
“We do know there’s demand (for coal in Asia) and port operators will seek to service that demand, whether they’re in the United States or British Columbia,” he said.
The proposed $650 million Gateway Pacific terminal at Cherry Point would add an average of 18 trips per day — nine full trains going north and nine empty trains traveling southbound — between Seattle and Bellingham. Marysville, which has 16 street crossings, and Edmonds, with a crossing at the ferry dock, would be the communities most affected in Snohomish County.
On average, about four coal trains per day pass through Snohomish County on their way to Canada, according to BNSF Railway.
The Cherry Point terminal could ship an estimated 60 million tons per year of coal, grain, potash and scrap wood for biofuels to Asia. Coal would make up the bulk of the shipments, according to the state Department of Ecology, which is handling the environmental review for the project. That review is expected to take at least a couple more years.
The Millennium terminal proposed for Longview, Wash., would have a coal capacity of about 48 million tons, according to the ecology department. Trains to this port would travel across the state but not north to Seattle and beyond.
Together, these ports could ship 117 million tons per year.
Possible expansions at the five ports in British Columbia could add 55 million tons per year to their current capacity, according to numbers compiled by SSA Marine.
If all of the B.C. expansions come to pass, they would roughly equal the output of Gateway Pacific.
“There will be additional coal that will be going to British Columbia, and we will be working hard to increase the percentage,” said Jim Orchard, senior vice president of marketing and government affairs for Cloud Peak Energy, a coal-mining company based in Denver.
At the same time, it won’t equal what could be shipped through the U.S. terminals, he said.
Cloud Peak operates two mines in Wyoming and one in southeastern Montana, in the area known as the Powder River Basin, Orchard said.
The greater the shipping capacity, the faster the coal can be mined without piling up, he said.
Without the U.S. terminals, “the timing with which we get to new reserves, it just would take longer,” Orchard said.
The largest potential British Columbia terminal expansion could occur at Ridley Terminals in Prince Rupert, B.C., 460 miles north of Vancouver by air.
This port gets ships to northern Asian ports one day faster than those sailing from Vancouver and three days faster than ships leaving from Long Beach, Calif., according to the Ridley website.
Right now, Ridley handles about 12 million tons per year. It has plans to double to 24 million tons, but has access to a vacant area nearby that could allow it to grow by 36 million tons or more on top of its current capacity, according to numbers compiled by SSA Marine.
It could potentially grow by even more than that.
Adjacent to Ridley’s current terminal is a 110-acre wooded tract called “Area A” that could be used by the terminal for further expansion, according to quotes from Ridley president George Dorsey in Coal Age magazine in March 2012.
“All that’s needed are the capital investments necessary,” Ridley said in the story. “Area A gives us the capacity to double the facility, from 24 (million tons) to 50 (million tons) and beyond. There’s so much space, it’s infinitely expandable.”
A Ridley official could not be reached for further comment.
“B.C. terminal operators are very competitive and capable and, like most businesses, will creatively endeavor to find a way to meet needs,” said SSA Marine’s Cole.
Still, Prince Rupert’s distance from the U.S. mines would increase travel costs, said Dennis Horgan, vice president and general manager of the Westshore Terminal in Tsawwassen.
“It’s a long way up there,” he said.
Currently, BNSF trains carrying coal through Washington end their run at Tsawwassen, said Courtney Wallace, a spokeswoman for the railroad.
Westshore is increasing its capacity by 4 million tons per year, to 33 million, and will be maxed out, Horgan said.
Some trains do pass over the Canadian Rockies carrying coal from Wyoming mines to Prince Rupert, according to Horgan.
“It’s still a long way,” he said.
Most of the coal shipped from Prince Rupert comes from British Columbia, Horgan said.
Westshore and Ridley ship only coal, he said. Neptune Terminal and Fraser Surrey Docks in Vancouver handle a mix, and Pacific Coast Terminals, based in Port Moody, ships mostly sulfur but has plans to add coal, according to Horgan. These terminals put together are much smaller than the Tsawwassen and Prince Rupert facilities.
Other commodities could figure into the picture, Wallace of BNSF Railway said.
“It is important to keep in mind that freight rail traffic will increase with or without coal export,” she said in an email. “Train volumes through any community ebb and flow based on several factors: market demand, customer needs, economic conditions, etc.
“Washington state’s economy is built on trade and ports and demand is increasing domestically for all goods as the population grows,” she said. “That’s a good thing, especially for a state like Washington that is heavily dependent on trade.”
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Nearly half of the subsistence fishermen who were found guilty of illegal fishing on the Kuskokwim River are appealing their convictions.
Their attorney, James J. Davis Jr., filed a notice a notice of appeal, triggering a process that could last months before arguments are made.
Assistant Attorney General Laura Fox said 11 fishermen are appealing the convictions handed up in Bethel in May. The appeals were filed earlier this month.
The Yup’ik fishermen were cited last year during a poor king salmon run.
During their trials before a judge, about two dozen fishermen argued they have a spiritual right to fish for king salmon when restrictions are in place. The fishermen’s defense was based on a free exercise clause of the Alaska Constitution.
Bruce Ward, an acting District Court judge, found the state’s need to restrict kings supersedes the fishermen’s religious rights.
In siding with the state, Ward said he looked at the case closely, reviewing a case decided by the Alaska Supreme Court in 1979. The case shows that the free exercise clause may work when religion is involved, the conduct is religiously based and the person is sincere. Ward said the fishermen met the first two requirements and addressed the sincerity question in individual trials.
Ward, however, decided that there is a compelling need to restrict the Kuskokwim king run based on recent data.
Davis was camping in recent days and not reachable by phone. But he said earlier in an email the goal of the appeal is to “reverse the trial court and hold that there were other things the state could have done to protect subsistence.”
Davis has said the state could press for action against the commercial Pollock trawlers that catch thousands of kings each year as bycatch off Alaska’s coast. He also maintains the state can protect king runs and still allow Yup’ik fishermen a subsistence priority over non-Yup’ik residents, even for a short fishery limited to people with a spiritual connection to it.
In the convictions, Ward imposed $250 fines for all but one fisherman, who was fined $500. They fishermen also were placed on probation for one year.
Altogether, 60 fishermen from western Alaska originally faced misdemeanor charges of using restricted gear or fishing in closed sections of the Kuskokwim River during the king run last summer.
Most charges were later reduced to minor violations. Many of the fishermen pleaded guilty to the reduced counts and were ordered to pay $250 fines.
