Blasting for Bucks

Railroad Wants Avalanche Prevention Inside Glacier Park

By Tad Sooter, 3-13-06

	A Burlington-Santa Fe train pulls into Whitefish. Photo by Chris Lombardi

Glacier National Park is compiling an Environmental Impact Statement that will determine what the Burlington Santa Fe Railroad should be allowed to do inside the park to minimize avalanche danger to an 11-mile stretch of rail near the park’s southern border. Some worry that the new guidelines could give way to the use of ecologically disruptive explosives inside the park.

Burlington Northern requested a mitigation program in 2004 after a train was stalled and partially derailed by a series of avalanches that halted rail traffic for 29 hours.

In February this year, Burlington Northern obtained an emergency permit from the park to blast snow off a hillside above the tracks after a foot of snow blanketed the area. The company used a helicopter to drop ten explosive charges onto a snow bank, creating three small avalanches that rolled down onto a snow-shed. Glacier Park spokesperson Melissa Wilson said it was only the third time in park history explosives have been used to move snow, most recently in 1996 to clear Going to the Sun Road.

The park is considering range of options in its impact statement, from allowing no action at all to the construction of new snow sheds and chutes or the use of explosive triggering devices like the ones Burlington Northern detonated in February. The impact statement will set guidelines for what tools Burlington Northern can use to respond to avalanche conditions and the railroad will still have to apply for a permit and give the park warning before taking any action.

Burlington Northern’s tracks run just outside park boundaries on a 200 foot-wide right-of-way through the Flathead National Forest. It’s a busy stretch of railway with about 50 trains passing through daily. The company has installed a system of snow chutes on their right-of-way but wants more options for avalanche prevention.

Gus Melonas, a Burlington Northern spokesperson in Seattle, said the railroad is working with the park as well as the Montana Department of Transportation and the Flathead National Forest to explore all possible solutions for protecting their trains.

“Safety is our number-one priority,” Melonas said.

Steve Thompson of the National Parks Conservation Association in Whitefish says Burlington Northern probably has money on its mind as well. He said the railroad wants to legitimize the use of avalanche triggering explosives in the park because they are a less expensive prevention method than building snow chutes and barriers. Thompson said that avalanches could be effectively minimized with a more extensive snow shed system, which would be less intrusive than explosives.

“The reality is that Burlington is making a huge profit right now,” Thompson said. “They think it is too expensive to build snow sheds and we think that they can afford it.”

Thompson also questioned whether Burlington Northern’s use of explosives in February was really a response to an emergency or if they were trying to make a point. He said emergency avalanche conditions usually occur during wet snowstorms that make flying helicopters difficult and Burlington Northern did blasting in dry snow conditions that were not comparable to when their train was hit in 2004.

“Burlington Northern wanted to create a precedent that after a hundred years they could say ‘Hey, we already bombed in the park, what’s the big deal,” Thompson said. “But what did they really prove? They proved that the snow sheds work.”

The Conservation Association’s concern is that explosions could disturb ecology in the park. Thompson said area near the tracks provides habitat for many large mammals including mountain goats, elk, wolverines, lynx and grizzlies.

“This is an area that has, in the past, been proposed by the president to be wilderness,” Thompson said. “We fundamentally disagree with bombing in the park to address the railroad’s problem.”

Thompson said he doesn’t know exactly what the railroad's request includes because the Conservation Association’s inquiry for the document was rejected by the park under Exemption 4 of the Freedom of Information Act which protects "trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person [that is] privileged or confidential." Thompson said he is content to wait for the impact statement to be released and will not make a legal appeal.

Mary Riddle, Glacier’s supervisor of the impact statement, said this project is different from avalanche mitigation in other National Parks because it is being done to advantage an interest outside of the park, rather than the park or its visitors. She noted that in Yellowstone and Yosemite National Parks, explosives are sometimes used to clear snow off roadways and limit avalanche danger to visitors. Riddle said that Glacier occasionally uses small amounts of explosives for clearing roads of large “truck-sized” boulders and for trail construction.

The park and cooperating agencies are reviewing the impact statement. A draft will be released for a 60-day public comment period sometime this spring. The park will have to address every public concern named before finalizing the report.

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