July 12, 2021: In late June, the Supreme Court dismissed the coal industry’s last remaining legal appeal of Washington’s 2017 decision to deny water quality permits for the proposed Millennium Bulk Terminals coal export terminal, signaling the official end of the project. This decision comes after several permit and regulatory denials, and multiple legal appeals in a wasteful attempt to overturn those denials. Many health and environmental organizations, communities, Tribal Nations, and faith groups spanning the Pacific Northwest to the High Plains persisted to defend our health and safety against the coal industry.
If built, the proposed Millennium facility would have been the largest coal transfer site in North America, sending up to 44 million metric tons of Powder River and Uinta Basin coal per year to Asian markets that are quickly turning away from coal-fired power. The terminal also would have added up to sixteen trains a day between the Powder River Basin and Longview, Washington, impacting public safety response times in rail communities across the West, polluting waterways, and contributing to higher rates of cancer in low-income communities, including Longview’s Highlands neighborhood.
This concludes a decade's worth of work to stop the coal industry from building seven proposed coal transfer terminals in the Pacfic Northwest and Canada that would have shipped well over 100 million tons of coal per year combined. Environmental Law Program senior attorney Jessica Yarnall Loarie led the legal work for this case, alongside managing paralegal David Abell, managing attorney Aaron Isherwood, outside counsel from Earthjustice, and the help of many others in the law program.