Carlan Tapp is taking on an unprecedented task — photographing all the ways that the coal industry is shaping our planet. His gorgeous and impactfull photos from Question of Power are making visible and legible an issue that is often too hard to fully comprehend. In the coming months Vantage will be running edits of his stories along with excerpts from our interviews with him.

We first highlighted Carlan’s documentary work in Bokoshe, Oklahoma, with Living and Dying in the Ashes, the story of a small American town in the shadows of a coal ash dump.

From the Rockies to the Pacific

Wyoming produces 40% of America’s coal, most of it mined from the fertile beds of the Powder River Basin. On an average day, 135 trains each hauling a hundred or more cars leave the region filled with coal for power plants across the nation. A handful head towards the seaport in Vancouver, British Columbia, cutting through the Rocky Mountains and following the Columbia River before winding their way along Puget Sound.

Energy companies want to see more traffic on that westward line. At Cherry Point, 20 miles south of the Canadian border, construction on the Gateway Pacific Terminal is set to begin. With cheap natural gas usurping coal’s dominance in the domestic market the power industry needs to shift coal sales overseas.

Gateway Pacific is a contentious proposal. Up to 18 trains a day each stretching up to a mile and a half long would arrive at the terminal. Small towns and large cities along the way — Sheridan, Wyoming; Bozeman, Montana; Seattle, Washington — would all be impacted by increased rail traffic and noise.

Coal dust and chips spill from the open cars, and the loads are so heavy multiple diesel engines would be belching out exhaust every time the crossing barriers are lowered. But increased runs mean more jobs for switchyard workers and freight engineers. A new port means higher employment in Washington’s Whatcom County, but environmentalists and the local Lummi tribe are fiercely opposed.

Progress on Gateway Pacific is currently held up in the courts, by an environmental impact survey and ongoing permitting processes.

“If it happens it’s just a huge game changer. There’s so much…so much money behind it, it’s unbelievable,” says Carlan.

To see the scope of the potential impact Carlan Tapp followed the coal.

Starting his journey in the Powder River Basin where mines support middle class families and ending it at the Lummi Nation’s coastal reservation, he shadowed over a thousand miles of railroad. He photographed what stands today and what could be lost if the terminal is built.

Road trips are in Carlan’s blood, best taken on the back of a Harley. In 2011 he rode his motorcycle the length of Route 66 raising funds and awareness for his nonprofit Question of Power, stopping in Bokoshe, Oklahoma, where he’s documented the health problems of people living next to a coal ash dump. The inveterate biker even offers two-wheeled photography workshops but, for this trip, his camera gear and the vagaries of weather required a roof. Carlan left Santa Fe in a rental car heading north looking for a rancher named L.J. Turner.

The Turner family settled their Wyoming property nearly a century ago. L.J. is the third generation to work the land, grazing sheep and cattle.

Fifty miles north of their ranch is Gillette, the center of the region’s coal industry, and a landscape defined by open pit mines. The Turners are down to 10,000 acres, from 30,000 acres, after their former leases were awarded to energy companies. The size of the Turner’s herds have halved. Streams and creeks have dried up and new water wells can run 600 feet deep.

“The ranchers are spread out but they found out that the water table had dropped because of the mining. The city of Gillette, when I was there, had just passed a bond issue. They’re going to run a pipeline all the way from an aquifer 80 miles away to bring water to the city of Gillette,” says Carlan. “Gillette’s dry.”

The city of Gillette maintains that the pipeline is in response to a recent population boom.

From Open Range to Open Pits

The culture of Wyoming is changing. The extraction industry and its accompanying supply-line partners pay good wages. Unemployment is less than half the national average at 2.3%, and 22% of locals clear $100K a year. More than a quarter of Gillette residents work in either mining or construction and people are proud of their financial success.

L.J. gets his share of guff for kicking up a fuss about how his ranch has suffered for the sake of coal operations. When he and Carlan drove out too see the mines in action they took the rental car because people recognize L.J.’s truck.

After a couple days exploring Gillette, Carlan split town to follow the trains west. Open country swallows all signs of civilization just beyond the city line, leaving only gently rolling grasslands behind. In the middle of nowhere, on a service road running alongside the rails, he noticed a four-wheel drive tailing him.

“I figured he’s probably a rancher or something, I’ll let him pass,” he says. “So I slow down, he slows down. I speed up, he speeds up. We play this little cat and mouse game along the way. Finally, I just get tired of it. I see a little gravel road and decide I’ll turn off on this road and just wait. So he turns off on the road. So I just fucking stop, I was so mad. I waited to get out of the car, he backed up and drove off.”

Carlan has received nasty emails and been intimidated on the job before, but this was a particularly intense confrontation. He figured that harassment is something that all journalists suffer at one point in another. People don’t appreciate having their way of life threatened.

The drive through Montana, Idaho and into Washington state was taken at a leisurely pace. Periodically a sixth-sense would cause him to stop and set up his camera by a stretch of tracks. It never took long for a train to rocket past. While shooting one rural crossing he was surprised by a security guard who told him he was trespassing.

“God, I was in the Flathead River area — prime fly-fishing area — at a real rural crossing, no lights or nothing,” Carlan says. “I’m looking down the track, can I get a shot, looking at the countryside. Out of the middle of nowhere a Burlington Northern Santa Fe train guard pulls up.”

Some people don’t appreciate having their way of life photographed.

Follow The River

Trains run through the Tri-Cities in eastern Washington and join the Columbia for it’s westward push towards the ocean. In the river’s rugged gorge Don McDermott lives on 42 acres of land, ten of which he and his wife have set aside as a vineyard. Chunks of coal littered the property, spilled from cars as they roared past. Community meetings led nowhere. Environmental groups have sued BNSF for violating the Clean Water Act, claiming that coal debris was spilling into the Columbia. In an indirect response earlier this year, the railway announced they would double coat coal loads with sealant before trains enter the river gorge to keep dust and spillage down.

When the sharp slopes of the gorge dissolve into the outskirts of the Portland metro area the tracks turn north, running through Tacoma before entering Seattle. In the Ballard neighborhood overlooking Puget Sound, Liz Talley watches trains pass from her balcony. Coal shipments are the longest and heaviest of the bunch, shaking her house for minutes at a time. Seattle has passed a resolution opposing the transportation of coal through its limits, but there’s no legal authority to stop it.

Deep Water Horizons

Cherry Point lies west of Bellingham. This strip of coastal land sits next to a naturally deep harbor, the only site on the Pacific which could accommodate the latest and largest transcontinental shipping freighters without dredging. If the Gateway Pacific Terminal goes through 80 acres of storage will house 54 million metric tons of goods, the bulk of which is expected to be coal. A 1,250 foot long conveyor belt will run loads to ships docked at three thousand feet of wharf.

Portions of Cherry Point have already been industrialized by two refineries and a smelting plant. Combined the three businesses already employ 11% of Whatcom County residents. SSA Marine, the company that would build and operate the port, suggests that construction would create more than four thousand jobs, with another 1,200 positions working the terminal once it’s brought on line.

The Lummi Nation isn’t buying it. Their tribe have inhabited the area for thousands of years. An ancient village and cemetery sit on the proposed terminal site, which has brought work by the Army Corps of Engineers to a standstill and threatens plans for the terminal itself. Now everyone is waiting for the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) which is being prepared by a multi-agency team.

“When I showed up they had about two thirds of the tribal council there!”

Carlan had arranged a meeting with a tribal council member. The meeting happened, but not as he imagined.

“When I showed up they had about two thirds of the tribal council there!” Carlan says. “They spent about two hours trying to just get to know me. So we talked and talked and talked about different things, about what I did, why I was interested in this, what I was thinking about doing. They all turned to each other and said, ‘Well, what do you want to do? Just tell us’.”

Documenting all that could be spoiled by the construction of a shipping terminal was what Carlan wanted to do. He spent several days with the Lummi photographing the shores where they have been harvesting crab, salmon and other fishes for generations. He learned the cultural history of the tribe, and the people’s personal stories, getting to know everyone who saw their traditional way of life on the verge of disappearance.

Since completing the journey Carlan has returned twice to visit the Lummi Nation, first at their invitation to an annual gathering and, most recently, to exhibit work from his project China Express.

China Express is in the middle of a six-stop tour after the Santa Fe Art Institute and Lannan Foundation saw Carlan’s blog updates and bankrolled the exhibition. Coal trains and the Gateway Pacific project are topics of discussion at each opening. When Carlan took the show to Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota he helped develop a documentary program for young students.

The End Of The Line?

After negotiations directly with companies involved in the Pacific Gateway Terminal project collapsed the Lummi invoked fishing rights as a way to derail construction. Legal action has yet to be taken, but if the EIS clears the way for the port’s backers the tribe can file an official complaint.

Earlier this year, backers of the port tried to arrange another face-to-face after a tribal representative wrote a letter to the Army Corps requesting the agency deny the construction permits. The Army Corps has yet to respond.

For Carlan, the situation is pretty black and white.

“I’ve been out on the waters there. The fisherman have taken me out in the boats and if the project goes through the salmon run will be done. It will kill them all,” Carlan says. “The Lummi know that within three years their oyster beds and plants and everything will all be pretty much neutralized.”

All images: Carlan Tapp