Earthjustice Attorney Jan Hasselman parked himself at his desk
last December and with a keen legal eye started hunting through
a mountain of documents. He was searching for any tidbit of
information that could help him prevent construction of the West
Coast’s first coal export terminal, which would bring with it
noxious coal dust, scores of mile-long trains creating traffic
jams, and significant greenhouse gas emissions. Hasselman pored
over a pile of jargon-laden emails and executive memos—all
40,000 pages … enough to make a stack 16 feet high. He read page
after page. He scanned. He searched. And then, finally, he found
it. In this Q&A interview, Hasselman discusses the case, and the
coal industry's plans for coal export facilities up and down the
West Coast that would eventually export tens of millions of tons
per year—even as the Northwest region is working to shut down
its last two coal-fired power plants because of their global
warming impacts. Why is there so much interest in establishing a
coal export