LETTER: Work now to prevent oil-train derailments

The oil trains snaking over Marias Pass and following the Middle Fork down into the Flathead Valley are a disaster waiting to happen. If there’s a spill, we’ll end up with toxic, volatile Bakken crude gushing down the Middle Fork and befouling the Flathead River and Flathead Lake. The entire hydrological system downstream of the spill — the surface water and groundwater that we all depend upon — would be contaminated.

On average, a dozen or more trains per week — some carrying more than 2 million gallons of oil — make the perilous journey down a river corridor with a long history of train accidents and derailments.

There is no cure for a spill. Once that toxic oil is in the river, there’s no way to contain it. At that point, we are screwed. Prevention is our only option. We need Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway and the state of Montana to do everything possible to prevent an oil-train derailment and spill that poisons our rivers, our groundwater, and Flathead Lake.

—Todd Tanner, Bigfork