The San Juan County Council is “disturbed” that the scope of the Environmental Impact Statement for the Gateway Pacific Terminal project apparently paid no attention to San Jan County.
At its Jan. 7 meeting, the council approved a letter to the Corps of Engineers, the state Department of Ecology and Whatcom County – the three “co-lead agencies” which jointly will produce the EIS – that asks for specific consideration of the impacts of the project on San Juan County.
The impacts in question were detailed in a letter prepared and submitted by the council in 2012 during a months-long scoping process that included hearings in
Friday Harbor and six other locations around the state in 2012.
That letter specifically asked for an “area wide EIS” that would “consider the cumulative impact of the transportation, storage, shipment, and use of coal” on the Salish Sea ecosystem and on the health of San Juan County’s citizens and economy.
A joint release of the three co-lead agencies in July, 2013, rejected the idea of an area-wide EIS, saying instead that the environmental review of the project “will closely study … direct effects at the site and evaluate a broad range of indirect and cumulative impacts likely to occur within and beyond Washington.”
In its latest letter, the council wrote, “Most importantly, we are disturbed that none of the ‘co-lead agencies’ recognize the obligation to include the concerns that we have expressed specifically for San Juan County.”
Alice Kelly, a planner for the Department of Ecology working on the Gateway Pacific project EIS, would not comment on the council’s letter until all parties had received and considered it, but she pointed out that the EIS will consider all “reasonably foreseeable impacts and effects that can be attributed to this project” other than the impacts and effects of the mining projects in Montana and Wyoming, which are regulated by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management.
In other Jan. 7 meeting activity, the council discussed the draft revisions to the Critical Areas Ordinances and set the public hearing date on the ordinances to Feb. 4.
The council also unanimously elected Rick Hughes as 2014 council chairman and Bob Jarman as vice-chairman.
