Will people lay it on the line to stop BNSF?

When elected officials and big-money interests collude against the people’s will on issues of critical importance, the people sometimes get angry enough to take direct action. Folks who wish to protect Spokane’s aquifer from BNSF’s leak-prone North Idaho refueling facility soon may reach that stage.

If you aren’t worried about the railroad’s potential for fouling our drinking water, read James Hagengruber’s exposé of BNSF’s horrifying environmental track record in this past Sunday’s Spokesman-Review. And get ready to do a spit-take with your morning coffee.

For nearly a century, BNSF has polluted aquifers in Western states with such impunity that it might as well be part of the company’s mission statement. About the only thing BNSF does better than taint water supplies is avoid cleaning them up.

Unfortunately, it appears the railroad soon may resume refueling operations on the Rathdrum Prairie. But as courageous Post Falls Mayor Clay Larkin points out, the only safe fuel platform is one that doesn’t sit above the aquifer. And that means keeping pressure on BNSF to relocate its troubled facility.

This radical solution would cost the company tens of millions of dollars. But that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the bill we’ll face if our water quality is compromised. Mandan, N.D., must relocate its downtown business district because BNSF dumped 3.6 million gallons of diesel into the city’s aquifer. Can we afford to wait for that kind of catastrophe before demanding more than Band-Aid fixes for the Hauser refueling facility?

If the answer is no, people have to get organized. In North Idaho, that might mean starting a movement to vote out any elected official – local and state, across the board – who does not publicly pledge to push BNSF to move its operation to a safer site. On the Spokane side of the aquifer, it might mean lobbying Gov. Christine Gregoire, the Legislature and congressional representatives to make life miserable for the railroad throughout Washington until it agrees to move that refueling facility. The only hope at this point may be to channel widespread community outrage into effective political action.

But what if such sustained pressure falls short? How else can citizens unite to show a recalcitrant railroad the error of its ways? In other communities, civil disobedience has made an impact.

Since 2001, for instance, thousands of European protesters have delayed several trains carrying nuclear waste from France to Germany – sometimes by chaining themselves to the tracks.

In 2000, the mayor of Darby, Penn., got so fed up with CSX trains blocking local intersections that she twice parked her old Dodge Diplomat on the tracks in protest. “Maybe I will have to go to jail so that a kid won’t get killed,” Mayor Paula Brown told the Delaware County Daily Times. The railroad promised to clean up its act.

And in 1997, members of the Ogichida Tribe blocked a rail shipment of toxic waste from crossing their Wisconsin reservation. That action triggered a U.S. Justice Department mediation process that led to tougher environmental safeguards on subsequent waste shipments, according to the department’s Community Relations Service.

Shutting down rail lines is illegal and dangerous (one protester was killed by a French nuclear-waste train just last year), so I’m not a fan of it. But when all other roads lead to dead ends, people do have the power to launch nonviolent protests that stop reckless companies in their tracks.