This community put the brakes on oil, coal, and natural gas with one law. Yours can, too. (Op-ed)

Cherry Point, tucked away in the northwest corner of Whatcom County, Washington, is a strip of shoreline on the Salish Sea known as Xwe’chi’eXen to the Lummi Nation. It is home to a beautiful state-protected aquatic reserve for herring, salmon, and endangered southern resident killer whales.

It’s also the site of three heavy shipping piers, two of which serve nearby oil refineries. If the fossil fuel industry had its way, it also would have been home to the largest coal export terminal ever proposed in North America.

Instead, Whatcom County provided a blueprint for ending fossil fuel expansion.

On July 27, the Whatcom County Council became the first local government in the U.S. to amend its land-use law to prohibit new refineries, fossil fuel shipment facilities, coal plants, piers, and wharfs. It also requires a more rigorous environmental review and permitting processes for the expansion of current facilities.

This victory sets a national precedent for communities to restrict fossil fuel development at a time when state and national policies are failing.

Whatcom’s battle began in 2011 when the massive multinational cargo operator SSA Marine revealed plans for the $500 million Gateway Pacific coal export terminal, an operation so large it would have shipped 48 million metric tons of coal per year. Members of the Lummi Nation and environmental advocates raised concerns about the impact on local ecology — including the Lummi Nation’s ancestral land, waters, and fishing grounds — as well as residents’ health, sparking protracted protests throughout the region.

Their efforts paid off. In 2016, the Army Corps of Engineers denied the Gateway Pacific Terminal proposal after determining that coal shipping would interfere with the Lummi Nation’s treaty-protected fishing rights.

The problem was, that wasn’t the community’s only fight. Between 2011 and 2016, Whatcom County residents were also staring down two new pipeline proposals (one oil, one gas), another pipeline expansion, and two oil train terminals. The carbon pollution that would have been created by the oil, coal, and gas exports would have been 2.3 times all of Washington State’s emissions, plus it would have released extreme amounts of deadly environmental pollution.

Then, Whatcom County decided to change the rules…

Read the full op-ed on Grist’s website here

To learn more about SAFE Cities work on policies that restrict fossil fuel infrastructure, head here. Or, if you’re ready to join the SAFE Cities movement that is phasing out fossil fuels and fast tracking clean energy at the local level, you can get involved here.