DEIR for BNSF proposed Southern California International Gateway released

BNSF Railway's proposed Southern California International Gateway (SCIG) reached an important milestone on Friday with the release of the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for public review and comment. The $500-million SCIG project is designed to be the greenest intermodal facility in the United States. SCIG will allow containers to be loaded onto rail just four miles from the docks, rather than traveling 24 miles on local roads and the 710 freeway to downtown rail facilities. SCIG will allow 1.5 million more containers to move by more efficient and environmentally preferred rail through the Alameda Corridor each year, greatly reducing truck traffic congestion in Southern California.

The report concludes that SCIG reduces health risk to a far greater
extent than even the port’s own goals for new projects. SCIG will also
create thousands of good local jobs, remove more than 1.5 million truck
trips from the 710 freeway every year, providing significant benefits
for local and regional air quality and congestion relief.

In
building SCIG, BNSF will clean up an existing industrial site and
replace it with a state of the art facility featuring wide-span
all-electric cranes, ultra-low emission switching locomotives and
low-emission rail yard equipment.

In addition to these
innovations, BNSF has committed to initially allow only trucks meeting
the Port’s Clean Air Action Plan (CAAP) goal of 2007 or newer trucks to
transport cargo between the marine terminals and the facility.
Ultimately, by 2026, 90 percent of the truck fleet will be LNG or
equivalent emissions vehicles. Trucks will be required to avoid
residential areas by traveling on designated, industrial routes with GPS
tracking to ensure adherence.

The draft environmental impact
report, which analyzes potential impacts from the project on topics
ranging from air quality to traffic, includes the following key
findings:

* The Port of Los Angeles has set a health risk goal
for new projects of not more than an additional 10 in a million excess
cancer risks. SCIG far surpasses the Port’s stated goal with a reduction
of cancer risk of 160 in a million.
* SCIG will have a significant positive impact on traffic, both locally and regionally.
o SCIG will eliminate more than 1.5 million truck trips from the 710, reducing congestion and improving air quality.

BNSF
looks forward to continued engagement with stakeholders at its updated
website, BNSFConnects.com, on Facebook and on Twitter. As part of the
environmental review process, stakeholders are also encouraged to submit
their written comments for the official record to the Port of Los
Angeles by December 22, 2011 to Christopher Cannon, Director of
Environmental Management via mail or e-mail to [email protected].
They will be included in the Final Environmental Impact Report.