The NWP was able to get most- if not all- of the "foreign" cars off the south end of the NWP in the days immediately following the issuance of the emergency shut-down order. As I remember they ran a special train or two to clear those cars off the property. There were a large number of cars stuck in the Eureka area- and they had been there since the last days of 1997. One of the many problems faced by the NWP was that the winter storms of late 1997-early 1998 did a substantial amount of damage to the line north of Willits. The NWP started repair work after the waters receeded and had work trains going into the early summer, but FEMA held up financing the repair work because of allegations that NCRA had spent FEMA monies received in previous years on things that FEMA money could not be used for, such as payroll. FEMA demanded a full accounting of all money paid out to NCRA, which NCRA could not provide because the agency lacked any level of detail in their accounting methods to show where FEMA money had been spent. FEMA held up all payments in the spring of 1998, and NCRA very quickly ran out of available cash to make repairs and suspended all work on the north end. This is what trapped the cars north of Willits, which included quite a few cars in and around Eureka and eleven loads of lumber at Island Mountain that had been the last train south before it got stranded there. Truckers eventually removed the lumber off of those cars, but last I knew they still sat there. There are five ex-SP GP-9's (all leased) and the ex-CCT GP-7 #70 trapped on the north end with those cars. Getting those cars off the line before the shutdown would have required fixing the line in the first place.

Keep in mind that the NWP only operated the south end for a little over two years. California Northern operated that line for three or four years prior to that. The argument could be made that SP did deliver the property to the state in that bad of condition, and CFNR/NWP never had the cash flow to maintain what they had, much less to rehabilitate what they inherited.

If the NWP were a private company the entire issued of an EIR would be moot. The review is required in this place because it involves the actions of a state/county agency (NCRA), which is subject to enviromental reviews required by the California Environmental Quality Act. Actually, the NCRA is in a fairly unique position...in addition to being subject to CEQA by virtue of their public agency status, they are also subject to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) at the Federal level due to the interstate commerce part of their operation.

It should be understood that the intent of NEPA was to make sure that decision makers at the Federal level were aware of all possible enviromental impacts of Federal actions. There is nothing in NEPA that requires a Federal decision maker to chose the most environemtally friendly option, but at the same time federal judges are constantly re-writing NEPA through case law, which is their right under the checks and balances system imposed by our current system of government.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV