(The following article by Michael Jamison was posted on the Missoulian website on October 25.)
WEST GLACIER, Mont. — Glacier National Park officials have balked at a proposal by railroaders that would have protected train tracks from avalanches by bombing the park’s wilderness backcountry.
Instead, park officials recommend that Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad build snowsheds over the line, noting that “historically, the railroad constructed snowsheds in this area to protect trains.”
That’s according to a draft environmental impact statement released this week, in response to a BNSF request to conduct avalanche blasting within Glacier.
The controversial proposal drew fire from many critics, including Steve Thompson of the National Parks Conservation Association.
After an initial review of the park’s snowshed recommendation, Thompson applauded the decision, saying “it’s really very consistent with the Park Service mission.”
Gus Melonas, spokesman for BNSF, said the company had not yet had time to carefully analyze the lengthy document.
Clearly, however, the snowshed recommendation fell far short of the railroad’s initial request.
The impetus for blasting snow inside the park with military artillery came on Jan. 28, 2004, when an avalanche blocked tracks south of Glacier Park for 29 hours. During that time, an empty freight train was struck by two slides. A third narrowly missed BNSF crews, and a fourth hit a truck on nearby U.S. Highway 2.
It was, by all accounts, a surprising event in a corridor known for its avalanches, and Melonas said at the time that the cleanup delay cost BNSF considerably.
In 2006, park officials allowed BNSF to drop explosives into the wilderness from a helicopter, but that effort produced “very little avalanche activity,” according to the draft EIS. All agreed the technical work by avalanche experts on the ground was flawless, but park superintendent Mick Holm questioned the company’s protocol for authorizing the blasting.
Against that backdrop, BNSF had asked park officials to clarify future operations with a firm policy, detailed in a public environmental impact statement. Specifically, railroaders wanted a permanent explosives program, including the use of howitzers.
But while park staffers agreed a threat existed to the tracks below, they disagreed as to how it should be mitigated and who should pay the bill.
“Explosive use for avalanche hazard reduction would be an unprecedented action in GNP,” officials wrote, “and the park has many serious concerns.”
Among those were impacts to wilderness values, protected species, visitor safety, winter habitat security and the natural role of avalanches in shaping the landscape.
BNSF, which has identified 14 avalanche chutes in the corridor, has argued that building and upgrading sheds would prove prohibitively expensive. Critics have countered that the company has not invested in any new sheds during the past 90 years, and now is complaining about having finally to pay an embedded cost of doing business.
Of the 14 chutes, two are considered minor, and will not need snowshed roofs. Seven are partially roofed with old sheds, and would require some upgrades and extensions. Five would have to be roofed from scratch.
The total cost for the estimated mile or so of new sheds has been pegged by the railroaders at $5.5 million per year, amortized over 50 years. Others have challenged that figure as too high.
Regardless, park officials noted in the draft EIS that any cost would be largely offset by the benefits of eliminating future train spills and costly rail closures.
“Fortunately, BN is in a very nice position to be able to cover their costs,” Thompson said. “They can afford the capital expenses that are the cost of doing business in this kind of landscape.”
Thompson was referring to BNSF’s latest financial report, released, coincidentally, the same day as the park’s draft decision. In that report, the railroad boasts of an “all-time record quarter” during the third fiscal quarter of 2006.
During the past three months, BNSF earnings were up 22 percent over the year before, with freight revenue increasing by $597 million. Operating income for the three months was $920 million, and “BNSF experienced double-digit revenue in each of the company’s four business groups.”
In 2005, BNSF saw revenues of $13 billion and a 73 percent increase in operating income.
One big reason for the largesse is that the railroad is hauling record volumes. That’s also the reason for the sudden interest in avalanches.
For decades, it’s been known that avalanches threaten the tracks and workers on the tracks in the Highway 2 corridor. But until recently, freight volumes have not been high enough to warrant major investment in avalanche mitigation.
Now, with volume and profits both at record levels, the issue has become urgent for the company, which has said building sheds will prove too time consuming and costly.
BNSF hauls across 32,000 route miles, a system with a quarter million rail cars on it at any given time. The company moves, every year, enough lumber to build 500,000 homes, enough paper to print 1 billion Sunday newspapers, enough asphalt to lay a single-lane road four times around the equator.
And, as Thompson points out, the company is paid handsomely for hauling that freight. They’ve always run through avalanche country, he said. The difference now is BNSF no longer wants to pay for long-term protection.
He said the park’s preferred alternative – sheds instead of explosives – is a direct response to the strong public comment critical of BNSF’s proposal. It recognizes the danger, allows for some emergency avalanche-mitigation actions in the interim, but places long-term security squarely on the shoulders of those at BNSF who would benefit most.
Currently, Thompson said, the railroad also is engaged in talks with federal wildlife managers about grizzly bears struck by trains in the same Highway 2 corridor. The company has asked for an agreement that would insulate it from liability should locomotives kill any more protected bears.
The park’s snowshed preference, he said, fits well with discussions about building wildlife “overpasses” across both highway and rail, and he said he looks forward to discussions about whether it might make sense to combine the two issues during shed design.
“That’s something we need to explore,” he said, now that the park has weighed in regarding explosives.
But Melonas noted the latest document is only a draft, and said the company might want to pursue its initial explosives’ request more vigorously.
“We are reviewing the draft EIS,” Melonas said. “It appears that Glacier National Park’s preferred alternative calls into question larger policy and transportation concerns that may need to be addressed in consultation with other stakeholders.”
Melonas could not say what concerns those were, nor could he say how the draft calls the unnamed concerns into question. He was likewise silent on who the other “stakeholders” might be, and how consultation with them might take place, given the public EIS process already under way.
The Park Service, for its part, was clear in its preference.
“After exhaustive study,” said Glacier Superintendent Mick Holm, “we have determined that constructing less than one mile of snowsheds will best preserve park values, while simultaneously providing the best protection for BNSF employees, freight, and equipment.”