My father, who was a WWII and Korea disabled veteran, instilled in me a respect for indigenous rights. On Maui, he helped Hawaiians with sovereignty issues, and one specific accomplishment was the inclusion of a wide shoreline path in front of a hotel, where the public road was located previous to the hotel's construction. At the nearby huge resort of Wailea, the road was moved up the mountain to accommodate oceanfront hotels, with little public shoreline access.
The Swinomish Reservation is close to where I live. Over the twenty years that we have been here, I have seen BNSF invest a remarkable amount of money into the 14-mile spur from the main line in Burlington to the refineries. The jointed rail is now CWR, and all the ties were replaced. Recently, 100-car oil trains have been common.
Only about a mile of the rail spur passes through the reservation. This is the location of a swing bridge over the Swinomish channel, a picture of which was featured in
Trains magazine for having five different kinds of bridge construction. A year ago, a train with local traffic hit a derail at this bridge, on the reservation side. It was fortunately not a loaded oil train with a lot of momentum. The locomotives overturned, spilling some fuel.
The derailment was immediately adjacent to an RV park for gamblers at the Swinomish Casino. There is also a five-story hotel overlooking the tracks here.
I feel it is proper for the Swinomish tribe to receive compensation for the damage to their land, and even that they should have received BNSF's gross revenue instead of just net profit.