“This program is not a grant program but a loan program that would need to be repaid,” the memo said. Department of Transportation to rehabilitate the rail line, which winds through Northern California’s Eel River Canyon. The project would have complete, or at least majority, tribal ownership.Īccording to a memo Mitton wrote summarizing the March 16 call, Wight was seeking up to $1 billion in loans from the U.S.

In March, six months before the rail project came to public attention, a Utah port authority staffer named Christopher Mitton participated in a conference call with two coal industry representatives, an administrator from a Northern California tribe and a man named Justin Wight, identified as the “project consultant.” The call’s purpose was to discuss taking over the North Coast Railroad and develop an export terminal at Humboldt Bay. The Utah Inland Port Authority worked behind the scenes exploring a secretive proposal to rehabilitate an unused California railroad that would be used to ship Western-mined coal overseas through an out-of-the-way port on the Northern California coast, according to internal documents obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune. Thank you for supporting local journalism. This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only.

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