Comment EI-14140
Received or sent (printed as 9/30/2008)
Dear Mrs. Johnson-Ball, 243 members of Congress, a majority, voted to pass H.R. 6707. While a 2/3's vote was needed to pass this legislation to bring railroad law into the 20th century, this majority vote speaks volumes to the wishes of the American people over that of big business at any cost. The ordinary citizens of this company did not have a full time P.R. staff as CN has at it's disposal nor the ability to spend $700,000 on lobbying members of Congress. When you take the short time we, the citizens of this country, had to present our case and you look at the majority vote to rewrite rail law in the Congress, there is no denying that most law makers can see the injustice in the proposed CN purchase of the EJ&E. The Canadian government's version of OSHA has given CN it's lowest rating when it comes to safety. CN has spilled chemicals into public waters and tried to ignore the situation until they were forced to respond. CN has not been forthcoming with requested information to many state and local government agencies. HOW can we possibly trust this company to operate in a responsible way when they have not done so before? HOW can we allow them to ask Federal, State and Local governments to pay for upward of $1 billion in mitigation when they will be the ones profiting. Why would we do this for a Foreign National company? The 1.5 million people along the train line will suffer horrible traffic delays as our road systems are already overburdened. James Oberstar himself has said that Lake County, ILL has one of the most inadequate highway systems in the country and yet we are going to let CN compound that problem futher? All we end up getting from this proposed transaction are incredible traffic delays, exponential increase in danger to our school bused children who cross these tracks daily, vibration damage to our homes, increased noise and air pollution, wasting of hundreds of thousands of gallons of gas from idling vehicles, increased commuting times and loss of values to our properties and economic damage to our downtown areas. And yet, CN wants us to pay for mitigation. PLEASE, do NOT approve this transaction. You have the power to stop it. Don't throw to these predators.
Submitted by: Robert Deja · Park Ridge, Illinois
The Board publishes this comment in its environmental-comment table for this proceeding. It is quoted here as printed; nothing is inferred from it, and it states the commenter's own position in their own words, not this record's.
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