DRAFT ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT
PUBLIC COMMENTS CLOSED
The Coast Guard encourages the public to submit substantive and relevant comments on the draft Environmental Impact Statement. Relevant submissions will be considered and may adjust their final action.
Anonymous comments are accepted.
The link below will direct you to the Coast Guard’s public notice, where you may review the documents before commenting.
Are you in favor of finding a preservation alternative to BNSF’s proposed demolition of the iconic Bismarck-Mandan Rail Bridge? Not sure what you can do to help? There are several ways to provide public comment, and the first step is to become familiar with the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) and the research conducted. The most effective public comments are those that provide useful information to the USCG (as opposed to something more simple like, "I'm in favor of saving the bridge"). Comments on the DEIS are not counted as votes on an agency’s decisions, rather they are used to improve the document and analyses, and to ensure that the impacts are adequately determined before a final decision on the proposed project. The more clear, concise, and relevant to the DEIS your comments are, the more effective they will be and the more likely it is that they will be utilized to improve the final documents and affect the agency decisions. Below are eight points that FORB has concluded are flawed in the current DEIS. We strongly feel the DEIS is inadequate and that impacts to our community--our iconic bridge, our heritage, and our beloved Missouri River--deserve thoughtful and thorough consideration under NEPA.
Who contracted for and prepared the DRAFT EIS. The lead agency did not write the DRAFT EIS itself or properly act as the “responsible federal official” in hiring, directing, and paying for the contractor who prepared the DRAFT EIS. Rather the Draft EIS was written and prepared by BNSF’s contractor. The result is a DRAFT EIS that is biased in favor of BNSF’s self-interested outcomes, that fails to evaluate reasonable alternatives to the proposed action, and that ignores or fails to adequately address key environmental effects and impacts of the proposed action.
Definition of Problem and Statement of Purpose and Need. The definition of problem section of the DRAFT EIS states that the primary motive for replacing the Landmark 1883 Railway Bridge is because “[t]he vertical load clearance of 19.2 feet across Bridge 196.6 limits the number of freight cars that can be stacked on a railcar.” DRAFT EIS, p. 6. Since the passage of the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments, a primary use of the 1883 Railway Bridge has been to haul low-sulfur subbituminous coal from the upper reaches of the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming to older coal-burning electric generation units in Minnesota and farther east. With the rapid development of the Bakken oil field in the late-2000s, oil tanker cars on this branch of the railway also become more common until pipelines were developed. Major changes to what is shipped on this stretch of railroad are being driven by greenhouse gas (GHG) policies that are shifting the purpose and need for shipping these commodities and what is likely to change over the next few years and decades. The DRAFT EIS segments this project by looking at this proposed project in isolation apart from the larger forces that are driving these changes and whether the proposed bridge will meet future needs of the local, regional, national, and international trade and transportation issues that are driving it. Such segmentation of the project and its larger effects is not allowed under NEPA. In fact, such segmentation completely defeats the purpose of NEPA and why it was enacted: “to use all practicable means and measures to foster and promote the general welfare, create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony, and fulfill the social, economic, and other requirements of present and future generations of Americans.” 40 CFR § 1500.1(a). Before this 138-year-old landmark is torn down, BNSF must show more justification than just stacking additional cargo containers on railcars that use this line, especially when BNSF has a near monopoly on all rail lines in the western United States, and there is no showing that stacking more containers on railcars that travel this line is necessary. There are alternatives that have not been discussed because the project has been segmented and the larger purpose and need issues have not been considered.
Failure to consider the project’s impacts on GHG emissions, climate change, and climate resiliency. By segmenting the proposed project from its larger effects, the DRAFT EIS avoids the issue of direct, indirect, and cumulative impacts the proposed project may have on GHG emissions and Climate change and resiliency. The transportation sector now is the leading emitter of GHGs of all sectors of the United States’ economy, and the shipping of goods in the global economy is a huge contributor to global anthropogenic GHG emissions. The 1883 Railway Bridge has been in near-continuous use for 138 years, and the Missouri River Crossing at Bismarck/Mandan is a key crossing within the nation’s railway system, including the western system controlled by BNSF. The transportation system, including the hauling of goods by truck and railway, will undergo major changes through electrification and other potential ways of powering the transportation sector (hydrogen, biofuels, use of carbon capture and storage technologies that result in net negative emissions, etc.). By segmenting this project from how it fits into the whole system, the EIS fails to consider its primary environmental impacts, and may result in constructing a bridge that fails to fit in with the transportation infrastructure that is likely to develop over the next few years and decades to address impacts of that sector on climate change and resiliency, and how our local, regional, national, and global economies and transportation sectors develop in response to those primary drivers.
Failure to consider environmental justice issues as it impacts the Mandan, Arikara, Hidatsa, Lakota, and other tribal nations of the upper Great Plains. The Bismarck/Mandan railway crossing of the Missouri River is most likely the most impactful project on the native peoples and nations of the upper Great Plains in United States history. But for the choosing of this crossing for the transcontinental railroad, Bismarck would never have become the territorial capitol of Dakota territory and a key center for riverboat and stage-line transport of goods and people for all of Dakota territory. Fort Lincoln would never have been located at the mouth of the Heart River to protect the railroad surveyors and to launch the Black Hill expedition that resulted in the gold rush to the Black Hills and the building of the western transcontinental railway system that resulted in the change in treaties and the diminishment of reservations that continues to affect the Mandan, Arikara, Hidatsa, Lakota, and other tribal nations of the upper Great Plains to this day. The failure of the drafters of the EIS to fully consult with these affected native peoples and nations and consider environmental justice issues is a fatal flaw that must be addressed in the final EIS.
Failure to fully consider the most obvious and reasonable alternatives to save the landmark 1883 Railway Bridge. EIS fail to adequately consider the “no action alternative” or to consider alternatives that would rebuild, refurbish, and continue to use the existing landmark bridge built by the Northern Pacific between 1880 and 1883. The bridge has been rebuilt, repaired and refurbished in the past. That alternative is not adequately considered in the DRAFT EIS. The DRAFT EIS indicates that the existing bridge is “restricted based on dimensional clearances and car-axle spacing.” DRAFT EIS, p. 6. The current bridge is limited to a load clearance of 19.2 feet (vertical) and 21.5 feet (horizontal). BNSF want to increase the vertical load clearance to 23 feet, 6 inches to meet its own self-imposed policy goal in “BNSF 2018”, so that BNSF can increase “the number of freight cars that can be stacked on a railcar.” DRAFT EIS, p. 6. BNSF also appears to object to having to do required underwater inspections of the piers “every 5 years and after significant high-water events” and wants to increase the speed that it crosses the bridge from 25 mph to 35 mph and to increase the weight limits on the rail cars. DRAFT EIS, p. 6. The 25 mph speed restriction affects only 14-16 trains per day, and does not appear to affect the total time in transit of those trains in any meaningful way. DRAFT EIS, p. 5. The DRAFT EIS makes vague claims about the existing bridge nearing “the end of its useful life,” but fails to present solid evidence supporting that claim and fails to consider whether the existing bridge could be refurbished and restored and reinforced in ways that would satisfy BNSF’s self-imposed goals of increasing the vertical height and weight of loaded cars and the speed at which they cross the bridge. Further, the DRAFT EIS considers unreasonable alternatives such as removing the current steel superstructure of the bridge and floating it down the river as an unreasonable and ridiculous strawman proposal that distorts the cost and analysis and has been used by BNSF to scare local governments from attempting to save the 1883 Railway Bridge at its current historical location. This bait-and-switch alternative is not one any reasonable person, entity, or agency would ever consider doing. The range of alternatives has long been recognized by regulation and caselaw to be the heart of an EIS. The unreasonable and narrow set of alternatives considered in the DRAFT EIS has the foreseeable effect of causing the DRAFT EIS to fail to consider almost all of the long-term direct, indirect, and cumulative impacts of the proposed project.
Failure to consult key federal agencies about this project. The lead agency has failed to obtain meaningful participation from key federal agencies that have jurisdiction by law or special expertise with respect to the environmental impacts caused by or related to the proposed project. The DRAFT EIS also fails to adequately address environmental impacts that EPA is responsible for reviewing and enforcing, including how the project will affect greenhouse gas emissions for the reasons discussed earlier. Other key federal agencies are also left out. For example, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) of the United States Department of Transportation is responsible for regulating railroad bridge safety. If BNSF’s primary goal is safety the FRA should have been part of this process. Neither of these agencies was meaningfully consulted for this DRAFT EIS.
Direct impacts of the project on the Bismarck/Mandan community. The Missouri River main-stem dams primarily constructed in the 1930’s through the 1960’s ended commercial navigation on the upper reaches of the Missouri River, making recreational navigation the primary navigational use of the river near the bridge. Most persons reading the DRAFT EIS will not see that the proposed new bridge will require bright commercial navigational lights, will add additional piers in the river that will affect the flow and recreational use of the river for fishing and boating and that will add additional danger of ice jams. Although initial modeling showed these impacts, by altering coefficients in its calculations, the project proponents miraculously made these obvious impacts disappear. The visual and economic impacts of tearing down the iconic and beautiful 1883 Railway Bridge are not discussed in any meaningful way. How the proposed new bridge will affect the number of trains that go through the community is not discussed in any way that puts the public on notice of those impacts. How fast the trains will be going and what noise and safety impacts that will have are not meaningfully discussed either.
The review under the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) as incorporated into the EIS is also deeply flawed and fails to adequately consider the historical importance of the still-in-use Landmark 1883 Rail Bridge at the historically important Missouri River Crossing of the Transcontinental Railroad between the Pacific Ocean port on the Columbia River and the westernmost port connected to the Atlantic Ocean at the Port of Duluth at the westernmost point of Lake Superior. The NHPA process for the 1883 Railway Bridge has been poisoned by scare tactics, misrepresentations, and aggressive lobbying by the proponents of the project. Meanwhile, similar railway bridges of much less historical significance are being saved for community use such as light rail and rails to trails, or as part of comprehensive community riverfront planning in numerous cases in various parts of the country. Preservation of the historic and continuing importance of the 1883 Railway Bridge to the Bismarck/Mandan community has not been meaningfully considered because of these tactics, and this is another additional reason that the EIS is legally insufficient under NEPA.