Stop the Oil Trains! Submit a comment to the Army Corps of Engineers

We need strong safeguards against oil spills and accidents to keep our communities healthy and safe. Yet BP – the same company that caused the disastrous Gulf Oil spill – has been shipping dirty oil in and out of Cherry Point without undergoing a full environmental review.

The Army Corps of Engineers finally caught on to BP's scheme and is accepting public comments on an Environmental Impact Statement. A strong environmental review would limit BP from increasing oil tanker traffic in Puget Sound. Send a message to the Army Corps of Engineers now urging them to protect our state from more oil shipments!

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I am writing to express my concerns about the impacts of the North Wing Pier at the BP refinery on oil and tanker traffic through our communities and waterways. I am concerned about the impacts on the health of Puget Sound and our marine resources. And I am worried about oil train traffic putting our communities at risk.

As it stands now, the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the second dock at the BP refinery does not adequately assess the risk of its operation.

Please take another look at this draft and ensure it addresses all the impacts and implications of the refinery’s second dock. Specifically:

1. The dock should not result in increased oil tanker traffic to the Cherry Point refinery – for either crude or refined oil. Don’t consider or allow any alternatives that would enable the BP pier or refinery to handle more oil.

2. Develop an alternative that restricts BP’s pier operations to the volume of crude oil and level of vessel traffic observed before the North Wing was built.

3. Require BP to provide to the Department of Ecology and to the public a thorough reporting of both docks’ actual usage in terms of number of vessel calls, products transported including type of oil and origin, as well as all oil-related incidents.

4. Require that spill prevention and response plans are approved and in place before BP begins to receive new types of crude oil or ship new products. As part of this safety measure, that every transfer across the dock is pre-boomed for safety.

5. Cherry Point is in one of the Salish Sea’s most sensitive marine ecosystems – the impacts of the dock operation, as well as its previous construction, need to be evaluated so that measures to counter harm to the ecosystem can be taken.

6. Connection to oil train traffic should be studied and included in the risk assessment. The vessel traffic risk assessment did not factor in the oil by rail facility, an oversight that deeply concerns me.

7. The Final Environmental Impact Statement should include a more robust analysis of mitigation for the construction of the dock as well as stronger mitigations for negative impacts from dock operation, including limits on lighting, shading, and operation during herring spawning season.

8. The Final EIS should include mitigations that require spill prevention and response plans for any oil product prior to being allowed to receive and refine these products.

It is important to get this environmental impact statement right. The above items are key to protecting our Puget Sound and improving overall safety of oil transport through our waters.

Thank you,

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