Tourism and Trains vs. The Environment: Where do we draw the line?
"Silverton - Durango train and town" by Matthew Saunders is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Hannah Williams
In 2018, a coal-fired train in Southwest Colorado started what was the sixth-largest fire in Colorado’s history at the time. The fire not only destroyed 54,000 acres and cost over forty million dollars to contain, it also desecrated the nearby economies and shut down the San Juan National Forest for the first time in 113 years. Historically, the train in question was used for mining between Durango and Silverton, Colorado, but its function today is purely recreational. The aftermath has divided the community as it recovers from a summer without tourism and battles a myriad of lawsuits. Today, steam engines are a hobby for train lovers—there’s only one functional Class I steam engine left in the US that isn’t purely for tourism. Thus, the questions must be asked: Where should communities draw the line between tourism and protecting the environment, and should litigation make that determination?
Tourism’s impacts on the environment include emissions from travel between locations as well as the effects of activities at the destination; eventually someone will have to be liable for those impacts. In the summer of 2019, the United States government named the Durango to Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad as the official cause of the “416 Fire.” The railroad’s subsequent denial of responsibility prompted several legal actions: the federal government sued the railroad for twenty-five million dollars, residents and businesses came together to bring suit against the railroad, and Purgatory Mountain Resort filed a claim for the losses incurred during the summer. In June 2020, a judge denied the railroad’s motion to dismiss—the trial is set for March 2021. The issue though, is not whether the federal government will win twenty five million dollars from the railroad; it’s whether the railroad will survive the loss. If not, the stage has been set for lawsuits to decide the fate of tourism trains and train companies.
Colorado law establishes a clear-cut liability for train operators and fires: “Every railroad company operating its line of road, or any part thereof, within this state shall be liable for all damages by fires that are set out or caused by operating any such line of road, or any part thereof, in this state, whether negligently or otherwise.” The lawsuit currently pending against the railroad is for firefighting costs on federal land, but there’s not much being done for the businesses that lost money or the homes destroyed in later flooding because of the burn scar.
Yet, the railroad is not without its benefits for the community. Thirty percent of Durango’s economy comes from tourism. Much of this tourism stems from the train. The train attracts tourists traveling to Durango to see one of the last remaining steam trains and provides jobs through partnerships with hotels and restaurants. The train is listed as a National Historic Landmark, and the cars themselves are maintained in original condition. The history, job market, tourism, and profit that come from the train are essential to the town’s survival, but the environmental impacts are starting outweigh those benefits.
Whether the train is viewed as a gem of history or as an environmental disaster, one thing is clear: something needs to change to prevent tourism from demolishing the environment. Colorado’s railroad liability statute is a good start but leaves holes for relief. Durango’s train is only a single example of a small town’s tourism industry trying to find a balance between regulation and recreation. This balance is a difficult one, especially when the majority of a town’s economy is tied up in recreation. The outcome of this lawsuit in small town Colorado will shed light on whether communities are going to regulate themselves or if a federal judge’s decision will write the story for towns that depend on coal-fired (or other environmentally detrimental) forms of tourism.