Below is a letter printed in the Novato Advance on November 18th, 2009:

NCRA article does disservice

Your recent article on the NCRA’s expected start-up date is little more than a press release for the NCRA. By omitting relevant information, you have done your readers a disservice. Simply put, there is very little likelihood that freight trains will operate any time in 2010, or even 2011.

As reported in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat (Nov. 1), prior to freight operations restarting, the NCRA will likely be sued by three environmental organizations: the Friends of Eel River, the Environmental Protection Information Center, and Californians for Alternatives to Toxics. These organizations are picking up the environmental legal case left unsettled by the city of Novato, when the City Council settled its lawsuit against the NCRA last fall.

The California Supreme Court has established that California’s Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires that environmental impacts of the “whole of the project” be analyzed prior to project approval and implementation. The NCRA has, instead, segmented the project by defining the scope of the EIR as limited to operations south of Willits in Mendocino County.

The environmental organizations contend the freight project definition includes freight service all the way to Eureka and, consequently, the NCRA is legally required to analyze the impacts of freight operations through the Wild and Scenic Eel River Canyon north of Willits.

A significant document trail supports the environmentalist organizations’ legal argument. These documents include business plans filed with the California Transportation Commission, legal agreements signed with the Humboldt Bay Harbor District, and frequent and repeated public statements by NCRA Board members making promises to restart freight service to Eureka within a few years. These documents are part of the legal record created by the city of Novato in its lawsuit and prompted the Marin Superior Court to enjoin the NCRA from further construction of the rail line.

Whether the NCRA wins or loses the expected lawsuit, the legal process to resolve a CEQA-based litigation of this complexity is guaranteed to be lengthy. Novato’s lawsuit took 12 months to resolve, and it was settled out of court. To the extent the losing party elects to appeal the case to a higher court, freight start-up would be delayed even longer.

The Advance owes Novato readers fact-based reporting. It’s not your job to be a mouthpiece for government agencies that make dubious claims.

Mike Arnold