GMC Monitoring Flight - Mobile, Al to Gulfport, MS: Part I - Coal Export and Terminals

First, we flew over the Port of Mobile which dominated the landscape immediately after takeoff from the Brookley Aeroplex. The port boasts the McDuffie Coal Terminal, at one time the second largest bulk coal facility in the US and the nation’s largest coal import terminal. In addition to several smaller facilities nearby, McDuffie can handle up to a staggering 30 million tons of coal in a year, but in the past year they processed *just* 13.9 million tons – only 46% of capacity. All of these numbers are of interest because of the intensifying debate over coal export.  With cheap natural gas from a market flooded with fracked gas from regions like the Marcellus Shale, along with stronger clean air and clean water regulations making the coal more expensive to produce (or less profitable, depending on who you ask), there is growing interest to transport more American coal to foreign markets – particularly Asia. 

Only  one vessel was loading with coal at the time of our flight, the Panama-flagged Grand Diva. What we noticed, however, was that the terminal was not being careful with the coal, causing a long black plume of coal dust in the water.

As an individual case, this may not result in a significant immediate impact on the environment – but this is only one ship being loaded, and a brief review of Google Earth’s historical imagery shows at least two previous satellite images or aerial surveys with visible coal in the water, and several other images that are less clear but also appear to show pollution. Chronic coal dust issues from a coal terminal are the basis of a Clean Water Act lawsuit in Seward, Alaska over their coal terminal and one of the main arguments across the Pacific Northwest against expanded coal export terminals to move Powder River Basin coal from Wyoming to Asian markets.  This is only one step along the way from mine to market – dusty coal trains derail far more often than you might think (see North Dakota, Michigan, and Nebraska, just this past month), loaded barges crash into bridges (just this week), terminals flood when hurricanes come through, and ships even crash into the loading docks. Not counting carbon emissions from burning the coal, scientists, environmentalists, and concerned citizens along coal transport routs are worried that these cumulative impacts will harm public health, disrupt their daily lives, and negatively impact the ecological health of waterways along the way from production to port. 

The Coast Guard reported to us that they were going to send out a helicopter to investigate the report, but we don’t know if they took any enforcement action. Because GMC partners frequently communicate with the Coast Guard, the officials at USCG sometimes follow up with our partners to let them know what they did. But what about the average citizen concerned about a pipeline leak or toxic air release in their backyard? This question is the reason we proposed building a FOIA-matic tool to allow anyone to easily request a report from their government about how they responded to a pollution report (if they took any action at all). Read more about it on our Knight News Challenge entry and let us know in the comments of this blog how you might use such a resource.