If a private lessee does the work using private money from Goldman Sachs, then there is no requirement for a environmental review. Similarly, if a private railroad carrier decides to build a private port facility which it will operate under Interstate Commerce Act authority – no environmental review is required. All of which is of no assurance that ocean carriers and port authorities would use the facility if built. Nevertheless, in principal, they could start work Monday. Unlike the accounts of a new railroad over Buckhorn Summit, the NWP project does not constitute either entry into a new market or new construction.

Even if there were non-fraudulent substance to the reports regarding the so-called “Pacific Rim Railroad” (which there is none), an environmental review under NEPA would take a decade – or longer – to complete. By way of comparison, the first administrative notice of the proposed extension of an existing railroad (the Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern) was published in the Federal Register on May 7, 1998, at 63 FR 25266-68 – ten years ago – and the first foot of new track is yet to have been built! And that is a proposal by an existing and credible railroad which proposes to traverse neither any “wild and scenic” mountains nor little sensitive habitat. Then comes the realization that the time and dollars were all for naught because the construction costs, including mitigation costs imposed by the STB, are ten-fold higher than the costs to restore the NWP.

Additionally, one (but not the only) important utility determinant is the distance between the port and the first transcontinental consolidation point at which the port traffic would join (or leave) mainline flows and not the length of the NWP line or the Coos Bay branch. For traffic to and from Eureka (actually, Samoa), that point is Roseville (Sacramento) – a distance of about 370 miles. For traffic to and from Coos Bay those points are Pasco, WA, and Roseville, CA – distances of 476 and 509 miles, respectively.

Finally, there are growing economic pressures for bulk commodity capacity. Increasingly, coal trains have to go to Roberts Bank in British Columbia. Much of North America’s capacity for bulk commodities such as potash, sulfur, scrap metal and the like is found in Canada or along our Gulf Coast. Containers may not be the only opportunity for investors in Eureka.

There are ample reasons for private investors to look to Eureka. Only time will tell if there are ample reasons to act.