To: BNSF Railway executives Steve Millsap, Mark P. Stehly and Gus Melonas

From: Spokesman-Review Editorial Board

Re: Reopening of the BNSF refueling station at Hauser, Idaho

We appreciate the time you took to meet with us, and we trust you’re right when you say the refurbished refueling depot is little threat to the aquifer now.

We also appreciate the heartfelt apology and embarrassment for depot problems expressed by Steve Millsap.

However, we’re concerned that you don’t seem to understand the passion this region has for the Spokane Valley/Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer. During our meeting Thursday, Gus Melonas underscored this point when he claimed that area media have made “a mountain out of a molehill” by overplaying the danger posed to the aquifer by the leaks discovered in December and February. Admittedly, the leaks posed little threat to our drinking water, but they fueled fears that the promised state-of-the-art facility was already springing leaks and would someday contaminate the aquifer.

Indeed, any threat to our underground water is a mountain to us. If we’ve overreacted to the first two spills, you should interpret that to mean the railroad has no room for error – and is mistrusted by many in the region. Although you told the editorial board that BNSF is now operating on 21st century environmental principles, we need look no further than Livingston, Mont., and Mandan, N.D., to see you’ve left a legacy of groundwater contamination and illness elsewhere.

You need to prove yourself here. And you haven’t, yet.

You were eager to discuss technical changes and fixes made at the depot since the court-ordered closure. But you danced around questions relating to future spills. So, we’ll ask those questions again. When the next significant spill occurs, will you police yourself by shutting the depot until the problem is fixed? Or will you force us to wait again for a judge to order you to do so? If your facility significantly contaminates the drinking water, will you abandon it forever?

You dodged the first question Thursday by saying you needed to review all aspects of the recent closure to see how things could have been done differently. You refused to answer the second question. We’d also like to know whether work crews share the same concern as management for running a leak-proof depot.

In closing, we and the 500,000 other water consumers in the region want you to be candid with us. Rather than hide behind regulatory agencies and court proceedings when something goes wrong, you should return phone calls from concerned citizens and call press conferences. By withholding information from the public, you create an atmosphere of mistrust, which sprouts rumors. And that’s how molehills become mountains.