The Swinomish filed suit suit in U.S. District Court in Seattle to permanently ban BNSF Railways from moving Bakken crude oil by rail across tribal land. As the Seattle Times reports, the tribe claims that, by sending 100-car oil trains across reservation lands without asking permission, BNSF is violating a 1991 agreement that allows only a very limited number of cars to transit Swinomish land each day.
The tribal land transit is vital for BNSF, connecting its trains to the Tesoro refinery in Anacortes. But the safety of the oil trains is drawing increased scrutiny. "It's unacceptable for BNSF to put our people and our way of life at risk without regard to the agreement we established in good faith," said Swinomish Chairman Brian Cladoosby in a statement.
The Swinomish-BNSF legal battle is only part of a larger, nationwide discussion about what precautions (and legislation) should be adopted to protect the public from more oil train explosions, one of which killed 47 people in Quebec last year. The National Transportation Safety Board has urged new route planning measures to avoid sending oil trains through large population centers. Vice News producer Spencer Chumbley's new documentary on oil trains features a segment on the effects of an oil-train explosion in downtown Seattle.