North Coast State Sen. Mike McGuire announced at a virtual town hall Wednesday night that the North Coast Railroad Company failed to submit an offer for financial assistance by the Surface Transportation Board’s deadline, which would have amounted to an offer to acquire the roughly 300 miles of tracks from Marin County to Humboldt County.
“We’ve stopped the toxic coal train,” McGuire said. “Thanks to your hard work, your organizing, your mobilizing — the big coal interest from Montana, Wyoming and Utah did not submit an application to move a toxic coal train forward on the North Coast. This is the biggest victory that the Great Redwood Trail has seen yet, but what we also know is that the best is yet to come.”
However, the North Coast Railroad Company submitted its offer for the rail line late Tuesday, showing it has about $15.7 million in the bank intended to demonstrate its financial ability to acquire the line.
“As the STB was set to continue its consideration for the North Coast Rail Authority’s railbank and the future of the Great Redwood Trail, a company that has been reported to have links to shadowy Wyoming coal interests came in after the buzzer to once again push a toxic coal train through the North Coast,” U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) said in a statement. “Their late application should disqualify them for further consideration. If not, the coalition of community opposition and their lack of transparency certainly will. I will continue working with Rep. Thompson, State Senator Mike McGuire, and our many community and agency partners in ensuring this project doesn’t move any further.”
The Great Redwood Trail would extend 320 miles from Marin County in the San Francisco Bay Area to the Samoa peninsula in Humboldt County once constructed. The trail’s construction requires being able to railbank the rail lines, a process that was established in 1983 through an amendment to the National Trails System Act that allowed the lines to be converted to trails until the time rail service was able to resume.
The North Coast Railroad Company presents a challenge to the Great Redwood Trail Agency, formerly the North Coast Railroad Authority, which has been working on railbanking the line after the cost of restoring and running it proved to be unwieldy, in the billions of dollars.
As a result, the federal government embargoed the rail line in question because of landslides in the Eel River Canyon, said Caryl Hart, chair of the Great Redwood Trail Agency.
“There’s been no activity on this line for 20 years,” Hart said.
The other obstacle standing in the way of the Great Redwood Trail is the Mendocino Railway, which operates the Skunk Train and wants to use about 12 miles of the line to transport scrap or gravel.
“I do have some concerns with this potential application to be able to bring gravel from around Outlet Creek south,” McGuire said. “No. 1, it’s going to create this huge hole right in the heart of the Great Redwood Trail. No. 2, we know that this plan to upgrade the rail — along with fixing the trestles, the tracks, the bridges, along with all the rest of the rail infrastructure — it’s going to cost tens of millions of dollars to do.”
In contrast, McGuire said the cost to put dirt and gravel onto the rail and convert it into the Great Redwood Trail would be $12,000 to $15,000 per mile.
Hart said she didn’t think Mendocino Railway’s bid would succeed since the company would need to show there was a significant and immediate commercial need for rail service on the line.
“So one of the things that’s going to have to be shown here is that there is an immediate and significant commercial need to take gravel that has come out of Outlet Creek and bring it 13 miles down to Willits right along Highway 101,” Hart said. “So I think that’s going to be an interesting conversation.”