Council must put city first in suit

Wednesday, October 15, 2008 2:53 PM PDT

NOVATO ADVANCE PAPER

A crowd of people pleaded to the Novato City Council to not settle its lawsuit with the North Coast Railroad Authority at a special Oct. 8 council meeting.

We hope that council takes the settlement and doesn’t pay heed to these folks, some of whom expressed concerns that – although maybe heartfelt – were far-fetched and highly speculative. One woman had been googling around and learned that there’s a decommissioned Humboldt Bay nuclear reactor that – like many U.S. nuclear sites – has waste stored on site that someday will be shipped to a federal nuclear waste disposal facility, probably the proposed Yucca Mountain site near Las Vegas, Nevada.

The commenter found a blog that suggested this waste might be shipped by train through the Eel River Canyon and then through Novato en route to Nevada. Did council know, she asked, that Russian nuclear material gets shipped to Tennessee? She wondered if this would come through Novato. A man who spoke after her said that he understood, now, why a port for container ships was proposed in Eureka: So that nuclear waste from all around the world could be shipped there and then taken, by train, to Nevada (right through Novato.)

Other speakers were concerned about freight train loads carrying gravel from the Island Mountain quarry, described as the “largest open-pit mine in California” right alongside the wild-and-scenic designated Eel River.

A few problems with these the-sky-is-falling scenarios: There is no Humboldt Bay container port, it would cost hundreds of millions to fix the tracks in the Eel River Canyon and the Island Mountain Quarry isn’t in operation.

Our advice to council: Take the settlement money. Under the proposed deal, the railroad authority would pay for quiet zones, it would weld the track through Novato into a continuous piece to make reduce noise and the railroad authority would reimburse the city $300,000 for its legal expenses.

Freight trains would only run as far north as Windsor, initially, and would be good for environment by transporting such things as grain and lumber more efficiently than trucks.

The city is cash-strapped and is considering cuts, including layoffs. Council got a good settlement offer and shouldn’t risk it by doing the bidding of the anti-train crowd.