Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley calls for broad federal review of coal export proposals

Allison Roberts News

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, following in the footsteps of Gov. John Kitzhaber, called today for a sweeping federal review of coal exports from the Northwest.

Merkley’s letter to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Land Management requested an expedited “programmatic environmental impact statement.”

The government should look at the effects of large-scale exports from all the Northwest coal export projects in the hopper, and evaluate mining, local impacts such as train and barge traffic and global issues such as global warming.

Kitzhaber issued a similar request in April. Like Kitzhaber, Merkley stopped short of opposing coal export, which would generate jobs in rural Oregon.

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