Harbor Freight Coupon

North Coast lawmakers gearing up to battle coal export proposal tied to Humboldt

It’s still unclear who is behind the North Coast Railroad Company, though Huffman said reliable sources have told him partners include the Crow Tribe, whose 2.2-million-acre reservation has vast coal deposits. The Wyoming address used by the company is associated with 250 business filings, according to a response to its STB filing by Charles Montagne, a lawyer for the North Coast Railroad Authority. Wyoming allows businesses to register easily, with few disclosures, making it a haven for shell companies, according to reporting by Reuters and others

Both Huffman and McGuire described the secrecy of the effort as part of what makes it so disturbing.

“We know this North Coast Rail line was built upon some of the most unstable soils on earth,” McGuire said, adding that a portion of derailed freight train still lies in the middle of the Eel River, where it landed after a section of Eel River canyon slid out.

“Now this corporation is going to propose tens of millions of tons of coal to thunder through Novato, to thunder through Petaluma, Santa Rosa, Larkfield, Windsor, Cloverdale, Healdsburg, Ukiah, Willits — tens of thousands of tons of coal coming through the hearts of our communities. It’s offensive, and we’re going to fight this with every bone in our bodies,” he said.

Caryl Hart, the former Sonoma County parks chief, is a member of the NCRA board and the Great Redwood Trail Steering Committee, as well as the California Coastal Commission, which oversees coastal development. She said the cash proponents claim to have and case law that has repeatedly allowed the Surface Transportation Board to override local and state government preference make the scheme “a very serious threat, even though it seems preposterous.”

But she said shipping out of Humboldt Bay would still be subject to environmental review and approval from local elected officials and the Coastal Commission, none of whom would be likely to embrace it. The harbor also would require substantial upgrades “because of the volume, the depth, the material — every aspect of it,” she said. “These harbors are not dredged to withstand this kind of cargo.”

Humboldt Bay Harbor Commissioner Richard Marks, who also is an appointee to the North Coast Railroad Authority, said he “would guarantee it would fail” to win local approval.

“I don’t see it being receptive at all in this county,” Marks said.

“It is,” said David Keller, Bay Area Director of the Friends of the Eel River, “absolutely in opposition of all that the North Coast community has been trying to do, in terms of global warming, and it’s certainly anathema to particularly the Eel River and all we’ve been doing to try to restore and protect it.”

Even Doug Bosco, a former North Coast congressman and co-owner of the Northwestern Pacific Railroad Co., which until recently owned the shipping rights for the stretch of track at issue, deemed the new proposal improbable.

Long at the forefront of a decades’ long push to revive the railroad, he has entertained a variety of different proposals but never one from coal interests, he said.

“To take coal and ship all the way up there I would say is very far-fetched,” said Bosco, an investor in Sonoma Media Investments, which owns The Press Democrat. “Unfortunately that railroad, at least in terms of freight, has seen its day. It would cost way too much to repair it.”

Representatives of the mysterious North Coast Railroad Company have not contacted Bosco, he said, which surprised him given his longtime ownership interest in the rail line. “You have to think, ‘Who are these people?’ ” he said.

Huffman, D-San Rafael, said the Surface Transportation Board “and the whole world” needed to understand that “anyone who tries to do this will be walking into a buzz saw.”

“I’ve been gratified by all of the opposition that has just gone to DEFCON 4 instantly,”” he said, “but one of those opponents is going to be the Graton (Rancheria) Tribe, because that area along Highway 37 is a special place for them, an ancestral land, and I know they are mobilized to put their resources into the fight.”