(The following article by Jennifer McKee was posted on the Billings Gazette website on March 21.)
HELENA, Mont. — BNSF Railway officials took aim recently at new plans by Gov. Brian Schweitzer for the state to challenge the prices the company charges and the sluggish pace of the company’s environmental cleanups.
Mark Stehly, a BNSF vice president for environment, research and development, told Montana’s Department of Environmental Quality director, Richard Opper, that the railway has not cleaned up several polluted groundwater plumes in Livingston because the state has failed to sign off on the company’s plans.
“BNSF Railway Company is surprised at the characterizations and inaccuracies” in a letter Opper wrote to Schweitzer Wednesday.
Stehly’s comments came in a letter of his own, dated Friday.
The flap started last week when Opper wrote Schweitzer to tell him that 10 percent of all Montana’s Superfund sites are a result of BNSF pollution. Some of the pollution has been identified for 25 years, but the railroad has consistently dragged its feet and challenged minor technical cleanup details in an apparent attempt to postpone cleanup, Opper wrote.
He suggested that the governor end the long negotiations at one BNSF site in particular — several solvent and diesel plums beneath Livingston — and begin cleaning up the place and billing the company for the work.
Schweitzer agreed and announced last Thursday that work would begin on the area as soon as the temperatures warmed up.
Stehly responded with a letter Friday, saying the company has always been committed to cleaning up Livingston, but was stymied by the state itself.
Stehly said the company intends to clean up the site, but is worried that Opper’s March 15 letter “will only make a cleanup more difficult and delay the closure of the site.”
Sarah Elliott, a spokeswoman for the governor, said Schweitzer stands by his earlier plans.
“It’s been over two decades since they found diesel and solvents in the Livingston aquifer, and it’s time to clean it up,” she said.
Schweitzer also said last week he was going to ask the 2007 Legislature for money to sue the federal board that is charged with making sure rail rates are fair.
Schweitzer said BNSF charges higher rates to Montana’s farmers — most of whom have no other option than to send their grain to market on a BNSF train — than the company charges to Midwestern farmers, who have a more competitive shipping market.
Gus Melonas, a BNSF spokesman in Seattle, said Schweitzer’s comparisons, which showed farmers in Sidney and other Montana farm towns pay more per mile to ship to Pacific Coast markets than farmers in Nebraska or Kansas, were not a fair comparison.
He also said Montana’s shipping rates have declined in recent years.