Coal Trains, the Environment, and Human Health: Why the Gateway Pacific Terminal is a Train Wreck Waiting to Happen
Imagine: while sipping your morning coffee, you peer out your kitchen window and see a mile-and-a-half-long locomotive passing your home, the first of twenty that will do so that day. Black plumes of exhaust are expelled from the train’s engine while clouds of dark particulates stream off each of the uncovered cars. What you are seeing before you is a train transporting enormous quantities of coal from mines in the Powder River Basin (spanning northeastern Wyoming and southeastern Montana) to…