(The following article by Blaine Harden was posted on the Washington Post website on October 1.)
KALISPELL, Mont. — The famed symbol of the Great Northern Railway was a mountain goat perched on a rock in Glacier National Park.
That railroad’s successor, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, now wants to lob artillery shells into mountain-goat habitat inside the park, which straddles the Continental Divide here in northwest Montana. The shelling would help control winter avalanches that sometimes threaten BNSF freight trains, about 40 of which pass daily through mountains just south of the park’s border.
Besides seeking federal permission for the occasional wintertime bombardment of the park, the highly profitable railroad stands to benefit from little-known legislation — passed in the Senate and pending in the House — that would spend as much as $75 million in federal grants to pay for avalanche control.
The legislation, introduced by two senior Republican lawmakers from Alaska and written, in part, by an avalanche expert who is a paid consultant to BNSF, would approve the use of federal money to assist “avalanche artillery users.”
Those who probably would benefit include state highway departments, ski areas and BNSF, if it receives permission from the National Park Service to bombard Glacier. The consultant and a railway spokesman said the railroad had nothing to do with the crafting of the bill and has not lobbied for its passage.
Using artillery for avalanche control is a well-established practice in Alaska and parts of the mountainous West. The 105mm shells used are military ordnance that spray shrapnel.
But advocates for the national parks and some of the nation’s leading avalanche experts have strongly criticized BNSF’s request to bombard Glacier. They have said the subsidized shelling of the park is aesthetically inappropriate and potentially harmful to wintering mountain goats, elk, deer, wolverines and endangered grizzly bears.
“There is a great hush over this park in the winter,” said Steve Thompson, Glacier program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, an advocacy group that works to protect the parks. “It would be a travesty to fire howitzers into the heart of one of our wildest natural lands.”
It is unknown whether shelling would wake the bears, which hibernate during what could become the artillery season.
The Bush administration has strongly objected to the cost of the proposed avalanche legislation.
For most of the 100 years that trains have crossed the Rockies along the southern border of Glacier National Park, railroads have spent their own money to build and maintain snow sheds that cover the tracks. The sheds have worked well to protect passing trains, according to the Park Service.
Over the years, though, some snow sheds have been destroyed by fire. In addition, the snow pack in the park has been shifting, requiring avalanche protection on new stretches of track.
BNSF, a freight giant that is an amalgam of 390 railroads merged or purchased over the past 150 years, has chosen not to rebuild some burned avalanche sheds or to build new ones to protect track now threatened by avalanches.
The railroad has opted for artillery bombardment as the “efficient, proven practice used in potential avalanche areas in North America,” said Gus Melonas, a spokesman for BNSF. He said the railroad prefers artillery because snow sheds are “are time-consuming to construct and extremely expensive.”
The railroad has estimated the cost of building new snow sheds and replacing old ones at $110 million; they would cover a total of about a mile of unprotected track.
While shelling is much less expensive, avalanche experts say snow sheds are a safer, more reliable way to protect long freight trains in mountain areas, as well as to ensure that busy east-west rail lines remain open throughout the year.
“Using explosives to release avalanches is not a sure-fire method to maintain a safe rail corridor,” said Don Bachman, president of the board of directors of the Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies in Silverton, Colo. “It’s cheaper in the short run, but it could be terribly costly in the long run, not just in monetary cost, but lives and property.”
The BNSF rail line near Glacier is a critical link in the economy of the Pacific Northwest, carrying about 33,000 container cars a day on trains that are often more than a mile long. When snow blocks the line for 36 hours or more, rail traffic sometimes stalls all the way from the West Coast to Chicago, causing backups of container ships in Seattle.
Bachman said BNSF should make the long-term investment in snow sheds, noting that it has the income to do so.
According to its annual report, the railroad is enjoying record growth and soaring profitability, with revenue of $13 billion last year and a 73 percent increase in operating income. To handle record freight volumes, the company said it plans to spend $2.4 billion this year on tracks, locomotives and technology.
“Our message to the railroad is this: You guys are making a lot of money, you can afford to do it right,” said Thompson, of the National Parks Conservation Association.
The National Park Service has been studying the railroad’s request to use artillery in Glacier and plans to release its assessment of the environmental consequences in late October. Officials in the park say the prospect of wintertime shelling is worrisome.
“We are concerned about the impacts on threatened and endangered species,” said Mary Riddle, who monitors environmental protection in Glacier. “We are also concerned about explosives going off in areas where grizzly bears den. There is not a lot of research about this.”
The consultant who helped write the avalanche bill, David Hamre, an Alaska-based avalanche expert, said he worked with the offices of Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young, both Alaska Republicans, to write legislation to aid avalanche-prone areas across the United States, not just places where BNSF is threatened.
A spokesman for Young said Hamre “provided analysis for the bill and did help draft it.” A spokesman for Stevens said the bill grew out of the concerns of many groups in Alaska and the senator’s own interest in avalanches.