^ROFL

lol really? i thought it would have helped in allaying any fears

IF people don't like it I think it is fine. They are building a new huge switch yard in the interior to move bulk cargo up to Prince Rupert from Ab and the east (once that's complete they will move it to there anyways). Besides a bulk ship with coal run aground and spill the coal all over the place no one care vs heaven forbid bitumen.

Moving coal through New West is just the next lowest cost solution other than moving it to Bellingham. Fraser docks are quite small, you will get more NIMBY complaints. I am pretty sure it is a company gambit.

Fucking hell, this thread is dumb.

I don't know how clearly it can be said that the coal in question is FROM the US, and the Americans from the US in the states of Washington and Oregon have already said no, according to a report on Global TV today.
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Yup.. they said no, now we said no.. they move it else where north.

The situation would have been different if more people on this board are employed as long shore men (at $60/hour).. I guess not quite the right demographic?:D

Long shoremen are the only ones that win, and I'm sorry, but paying a couple long shoreman is not worth the dimished value of our province.

If there was a great economic benefit for BC, don't you think they would be yelling those figures from the top of a coal pile?

Don't you think dumpy washington state would grab those bucks?
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U.S./Canada Coal Terminals | Coalswarm

Not sure how accurate this is but the next coal port is in LA. :pokerface:

One thing they forgot to mention is Australian coal export to China is tanking... basically they want to undercut the Aussies long term contracts, and the only way to do it is to make it cheapest and quickest possible via existing routes.

Well Vancouver can't be much of a port city if there are no long shore men. Then everyone would really just be selling houses and services to one another. We need them to justify million + housing in Strathcona :)

Oh have you seen the size of the WA ports especially Bellingham? They are really tiny, and they can never hire enough people.

Americans almost voted "no" for a proposed bridge that Canada was going to foot the bill for, entirely, over on the East Coast because some nut was telling residents that there would be hidden Canadian taxes on Americans

as i linked in previous posts the tech is there to prevent almost all coal dust/sludge from falling off the trains and those against the issue should be arguing for stricter guidelines instead of preventing revenue and securing jobs (not just longshoremen)

You don't get it do you? The coal is from the US and yet 2 states in the US have ban exporting it through their ports. So they came to Vancouver and export it out to china. If the coal is from BC sure that's fine but if the US is banning it why are we risking the health of people living in New West and area around New West?

Why are why risking it? Also there is little to no data to support how many jobs it will create and what are the economy benefits it have on us.

It's kind of ironic how you call out someone for not getting it, while you yourself employ the logic of a handicapped monkey. Also, we don't need data to know that this Coal won't magically transport itself. This will create jobs - those people will then buy cars, furniture, go out to restaurants, etc. Jobs support jobs - something people in this province need to understand.

No dude, you don't get it. This is American coal being transported on american trains to a port in new west where what...10 people will move it to an American barge and then transferred to an american ship and sent to Asia.

Do you really think if this was helping our economy so much and creating jobs, the province and the port would be so tight lipped about it? Fuck, christy Clark is on tv if she creates 5 new jobs talking about how great she is!

There are no numbers...how much will they make? How many will be hired if any? The only solid number that have been released is how much coal will be processed.

You can talk about stimulating the economy all you want and talking to us like we have no fucking clue how giving someone a job allows them to spend money but until there are so numbers to go on, you are talking out of you ass.

Im not in this thread talking about the fishes...I'm saying, what ghe fuck are they hiding? How is this going to stimulate the economy if the only thing they are doing is renting a plot of land to a bunch of americans.
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Tax the shit out of Americans. Carbon tax. LOL.

Remember the explanation why identical products were more expensive up here... yeah...

Supposedly there's going to be a "super" coal port built in the states and this move into BC would only be temporary although I'm not sure how accurate that is

I tried googling it and could only find this proposed coal port in Oregon which got its first set of permits this day

Oregon coal port gets initial permits - Spokesman.com - June 1, 2013

Wait, didn't grid and dino and slip just finish beating us over the head with how WA and OR have "banned" coal shipments through their ports? This doesn't sound like "banning" to me.

If anyone bothered to listen to the Bill Good segment, the CEO of FSD pointed out that any *suitable* terminals built on the US coast would have to start from scratch and take years before they were operational. FSD is an existing terminal that can have it the necessary updates in place in 7-8 months, which is why they want to jump on the business while they can.

I still don't see how the source of this coal is relevant. So it's okay that Neptune is moving Canadian coal out of the north shore - the "environmental risk" is acceptable because it comes from Canada - but not acceptable if it comes from the US? Just trying to be clear here: US coal dust bad, Canadian coal dust good? Is that it?

Pretty much.. it seems when people find things that are inconvenient in their backyard no matter it is First Nations, resources, trade etc.. first thing they throw out is the border trump card. However in this defence, US has more coal reserve than Canada. I would say it is suitable "new" terminal.

The OR terminal is from scratch.. but Prince rupert is not and it is expanding quick.. PR is actually a quicker way to China than from OR. That's one of the reason why PR commercial real estate had been skyrocketing the last little while. Not to mention if you are a CN stock holder, you have been rewarded quite nicely too.

Don't forget, Dinosaur is bullish about New West real estate.. heaven forbid having a huge coal pile outside the windows of his new purchase will make his purchase worthless.

Outside the window and across the river... oh, with a few hundred acres of parked cars in between, too. And given the prevailing winds are generally westerlies, FSD is also generally downwind of New West.

http://lh4.ggpht.com/-MShcWRd6Yug/Ua..._google_ca.jpg
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Unless the wind comes around to a bearing between 90 and 180 degrees (rare), I'm not sure how this would actually affect New West at all.

I have not gone into the whole environmental aspect of have a coal yard sitting in a neighbourhood because the focus of this thread was steered towards the economy and "industry".

Of course coal is bad to breath and given the choice, I don't think anyone would choose to have one anywhere near people, but eh fact is our economy is suffering and there are too many people out of work. Some times there needs to be a sacrifice. I may not like it, you make not like it, but hell...people gotta eat. Its like when I mentioned the pipelines a few posts ago....to be blindly against them is stupid. If there was a cost-effect proposal on the table where people could really see the benefit of having the pipeline run through BC, I am not sure all would be against. Ex: 1 pipeline=4 hospitals and 10 schools. I think people would stop and really have to think about it...

My issue with this project is obviously environmental....but its also economy based. Does the risk outweigh the benefit...IMO, without a doubt yes. Its not really about yanky coal...its about the fact that 200 canadian coal miners were not employed to mine it....so why are we taking the risk? Am I making sense?

:( :okay:

Yes, as its supporting an entire chain of economic activity that is supporting Canadians at multiple points in the supply chain.

So, yes. It's very different.

The only reason I'm at all holding out any support for the pipeline is that its Canadian oil.

This isn't a Canada=good, USA=bad thing but if we're going to take something on, then I want to reap the most benefit from it, not just deal with the ass end of the shipment that everyone else turned down.

And once again I ask, where are the numbers that people are providing of how much economic activity this will spur? You guys are arguing for something that I don't particularly feel you understand, so prove me wrong. The companies in question I'm sure are pointing out how this is a great economic benefit to BC...so how much is it?

Like, if we can't, as a city, have a discussion when things like this come up about whether we as a group want to do some of this stuff, then why do we bother debating anything? One job created is enough to do it all. Kinder-Morgan doubling their pipeline into Burnaby...fucking done. Enbridge. fucking done. Coal too? Fucking done.

We always examine these things with one thing in mind: whats in it for me? Does the greater good outweigh the affects on the NIMBY's? Pipelines...its selling Canadian oil, so its our unfortunate role to play in Canada's oil industry. Ultimately, I think it will pass for that reason.

Shuttling someone else's coal, so it can support jobs in Nebraska is not what I would consider in the greater good for BC. I think it should probably not pass for that reason.

You can still flourish as a primarily residential area.

From my research no, there are no hard numbers out yet. But I believe some of you are greatly under estimating the number of jobs / amount of work required.

It's not just the longshoremen, there will be jobs in the construction and labour market to help build the expansion, there will have to be jobs added for rail management with the increased rail traffic, increased work load for harbour patrol, coast guard, and tugs in the area that may produce more jobs.

From the time of construction to the first boat loaded and towed out this project could effect thousands of people in the job market.

edit*
Also we have to remember that just because it's not creating jobs doesn't mean it's not creating work. There may not be a jump in the number of new jobs this creates but there will be more work hours created.

It's a lot of the same arguments we heard against Northern Gateway.

"Oh well, it might create jobs, but it will ONLY be X number of jobs." It's really easy to be that dismissive if you're not one of those X, with kids to feed and a mortgage to pay.

"Sure it will create Yx1000 construction jobs, but those are only temporary and will be done in a few years." Uhh, news flash, but that's the nature of any construction business. NO construction job goes on forever (although some may seem like it). And again, very easy to dismiss those jobs if you're not among the Yx1000.

I grew up in that kind of situation, where a family has to survive from one job to the next. Where every time the phone rings, you're hoping it's someone with news of another project that can put bread on the table for a few more weeks or months. So I can picture - vividly - what goes on around the dinner tables of some of these construction workers, who get the news that there may just be a big project in the works that will keep the rent paid for a couple of solid years, and maybe give the kids a some happier birthdays and Christmases... only to have a bunch of eco-weenies living a comfy big-city life a thousand miles away screaming about how those jobs are irrelevant and shouldn't be a consideration when it comes to the Big Evil Oil Companies, or US coal miners, or Asian markets.

Oh come on! My daddy was a hard workin' man too...and we had lean christmases when industry went to shit too.

I grew up in the middle of nowhere in Nova Scotia...that should say more than enough! We quite literally had a set number of jobs and each job fucking counted.

Would I say yes to opening a garbage dump next to my house so I could work in it? No.

Trust me when I say that no one is just freely saying "fuck your concerns". I mean, I'm sure some of the blinded enviro-hippies are, but in the same token, I'm sure there are some on the other side saying, "let the air burn".

I honestly don't think the amount of jobs that would be created by this plan would add up to anything. I think it will be fantastic for the miners/communities/shareholders of the mines in Wyomming. But I honestly don't care about them in terms of taking a sacrifice myself.

At best, I think FSD may be able to get back to their own full employment levels.

So if you weren't crying for the layed off port workers yesterday, please don't cry for them today.

**AND...even if this thing were supporting canadian workers(which its not) the mines in BC aren't even hiring miners from BC...they are importing them from China.

A little bit on FSD:

FSD likes to talk about how hard they were hit in the recession and lost a large amount of their business.

Coal terminal expansion vital, argues Fraser Surrey Docks - British Columbia - CBC News

Which is interesting as when I worked in logistics(and even applied to work at FSD) they were losing their customers long before the recession fucked the rest of it up.

Why?

Because its a fucking shithole, thats why.

At best, their customers(shipping lines) were the smallest, shittiest shipping lines that added up to complete nothing in terms of the market....and they started pulling out of FSD. There was a month or two when those announcements came out at a fairly quick rate.

We pulled containers out of every major port for every major importer in Vancouver(and Canada) and barely if ever had to go to FSD.

The people were rude as hell...not that port workers are overly friendly, but they took the cake on being shitty and it took forever to send a truck both in and out of FSD to get a container.

When I applied to work there, they gave me a 10 page questionaire to fill out. Each question was worded in a way that said, "this place is a shithole, Because of this reason tell us you still want to work here"

Example?

"Truck drivers can sometimes be hostile and rude. Tell us in your own words how you are set to handle working in an environment that features a lot of rude people being hostile towards you"

"Working in a port can feature long hours of hectic activity with minimal assistance or support..."

For 10 pages. When an employer knows that they are crap to work for, and won't pay your enough...you walk.

So, given that process, it didn't surprise me that they lost all their shipping business. It didn't surprise me that at a time when the other ports were really hitting capacity, nothing ever went to FSD to relieve the pressure and it doesn't surprise me that as a last ditch effort they'd look to coal now.

One customer, one thing...minimal effort, nice regular reward. They can't handle doing anything else.

But FSD was shit years ago, it was shit yesterday, and right now...its shit. This isn't a 'NEW' problem...its years old.

Their plan doesn't even make sense...4 million tons is nothing, and its even a 2 step process involving another transfer at Texada Island to ship off to China. Meaning its more expensive.

And in a volatile market for a product, it will be the first shipment to be cut off when the price goes down.

So this has been approved

CBC My Region - Surrey Fraser coal terminal approved by Port Metro Vancouver

Thoughts?