Rep. Ryan Zinke is calling in reinforcements in a fight over the permitting process for a construction project in Washington state, which he suspects is being killed by an Army Corps of Engineers official at the behest of environmental activists.
The Montana Republican, a former Navy Seal, is accusing Col. John Buck of short-circuiting the construction of the Gateway Pacific Terminal, an important development for the struggling coal industry. He leveled the charge in a letter sent to the Pentagon’s top watchdog.
“They intend to deny the permit before the draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is set to be completed in October 2016,” Zinke wrote in the letter to acting inspector general Glenn Fine. “Colonel John Buck, Commander of the USACE’s Seattle District, has personally told me and my staff that he intends to make this determination this month. Not only is such a move completely unprecedented, but it is also politically motivated, which directly violates his military orders.”
Although a Washington project, the terminal is important conduit for coal mines in Wyoming and Montana. Environmental activists, native tribes, and industry representatives have been fighting over the GPT for five years — a controversy reminiscent of the State Department’s refusal to permit the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have crossed the country’s northern border.
President Obama’s team blocked the pipeline despite a State Department study that concluded the pipeline would “not likely result in significant adverse environmental effects,” and opponents of the coal industry project want the Army Corps to move before the conclusion of the environmental study. Congressional Republicans have been discouraging Army Corps leadership from taking that step for months.
“The [environmental impact statement] process is an established tool used to identify potential environmental impacts and review opportunities to potentially redesign the project or operations to avoid or minimize these potential impacts,” Zinke and several other lawmakers wrote in July.
“The de minimis threshold is supposed to be considered after examining potential opportunities to mitigate any negative impact.”
Local tribes, however, argue that their existing treaties with the federal government already give them the leverage to block the terminal’s construction, and they deny that a hypothetical alternative plan could satisfy their environmental concerns. “Coal is black death,” Brian Cladoosby, president of the National Congress of American Indians, said in January. “There is no mitigation.”
Zinke criticized the Army Corps for seeming to defer to such pressure in advance of the environmental impact statement’s release. “I am incredibly concerned by Colonel Buck’s unwillingness to follow Army protocol,” he wrote the the acting inspector general. “Therefore, I urge you to investigate his dangerous behaviors and inclination to skirt military procedure to appease politically motivated interests.”
