The coal terminal has no benefit yo Whatcom a county and lots of negatives. They are making no plans to protect the area from fugitive coal dust which will be spread in a three to five mile radius around the terminal, on farms, homes and school yards. ...and that is only one problem. That is completely separate from the coal trains which will traverse the western shoreline of the county, all the most valuable view property. It is already depressing the property values in the county. The property owners in the south end of town don’t want to talk about it, but the land is already slipping from the weight and vibrations of the coal trains. One property owner had a gazebo in the back of their yard, to take advantage of the view, and they woke up one morning this summer and the gazebo was gone. They blame the trains. The south end of Bellingham could end up with a land slide to rival Oso.
Then there are the road closures around Ferndale that they plan. They plan to close the road, north of Dendale for several hours a day to get the trains through, rather than on every hour. That would cut off emergency services and force parents to take a twenty minute detour t get to their kids’ schools.
There will be only about forty jobs created by the coal terminal, itself. Those jobs will be ILWU jobs, an openly communist union that supports Hamas and ISIS and have blocked both an Israeli ship and the Kurdish oil tanker from unloading to express their opposition.
No one Whatcom County wants the coal terminal except union members and Lynden residents because it will harm everyone else in one way or the other. The coal terminal is just not a good fit for Whatcom a County and the developers lied about it, much the same way that Obama lied about Obamacare.
We do have an ongoing coal train issue here in Seattle, but I didn't realize that involved Bellingham, I thought it was a local issue.