Climate change advocacy is experiencing an unprecedented level of urgency nationwide, but on the lower Columbia River, critics say that several fossil fuel export projects continue to move forward with little public oversight and little review of the combined impacts they might have on the river, local communities or the climate.
These include the world’s largest fracked-gas-to-methanol refinery proposed for Kalama, Wash., a matching proposal from the same company across the river in Oregon, and an ethanol and heavy oil terminal operated by Global Partners at Port Westward in Clatskanie. The Kalama facility is being reviewed for its contribution to greenhouse gases and is seeking a $2 billion federal loan guarantee.
The combined effects of all these projects could permanently change the character of the lower Columbia River, converting it from a critical salmon habitat to an “industrial sacrifice zone.” That’s according to Paulette Lichatowich, a former commissioner at the Port of Columbia County which has promoted some of these projects.
In December, Lichatowich sent letters to Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Beaverton) to sound the alarm on these projects and to request a comprehensive review that would notify the public and invite public comments. Several local residents want studies of earthquake risks at project sites, as well as threats to farmers from groundwater pollution that could result from the re-zoning of 837 acres from agricultural to industrial use in Columbia County.
“I’m asking that state and federal agencies begin to look at the impact on both sides of the Columbia river to the fisheries, the endangered species in the river, and our communities,” Lichatowich said. “We need a comprehensive environmental risk assessment, and an economic risk assessment for the lower Columbia River, including economic risks to fisheries, agriculture and tourism.”
Lichatowich has found a sympathetic ear in Wyden.
“The health and safety of Oregonians living all along the Columbia River must be a priority,” Wyden said in an email to Street Roots. “As these proposals on the lower Columbia move through their local processes, I’m keeping a close watch to see that these projects meet all federal safety and environmental laws. Communities in our state’s iconic Gorge have already suffered the dangers of crude oil shipments, and those incidents sound the alarm that Congress must do more to protect these communities.”
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In 2014, Zenith Energy applied for a building permit to construct infrastructure that would allow them to off-load and operate an increased number of oil trains at its Portland Terminal on Northwest Front Avenue. The permit was issued two years before the Portland City Council approved legislation in 2016 that would prohibit the construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure in the City of Portland.
The expansion was the impetus behind a March 13 demonstration at City Hall by activists opposed to Zenith’s planned additional shipments.
Mayor Ted Wheeler has expressed alarm at the Zenith expansion, saying in a written statement: “I am committed to undertaking whatever action I am permitted to ensure that there are limits placed on this proposed expansion. I do not support the proposed activity at the Zenith site.”
Eileen Park, director of communications for Wheeler, said that the mayor is also concerned about possible impacts of increased oil shipments on tribal fisheries and cultural resources and that “the previous council should have reached out to tribal government partners, if they haven’t. This predates our administration (2014). From what we’ve been told, the previous council did not reach out. The Mayor’s Office is currently working with Columbia River Treaty Sovereign Nations to assess whether anything was done incorrectly.”
Lichatowich said that both Zenith and Global Partners began operating without enough public involvement.
“The Zenith terminal is a perfect example of a facility that got flipped into something else, and the community didn’t have an opportunity to participate in that decision. The same thing happened at Port Westward, where the ethanol plant was built with state grants and loans for renewable energy, and then was flipped into a crude oil terminal. And now it’s going to be used for tar sands oil.”
Zenith’s Portland terminal was originally an asphalt plant but was purchased by Arc Logistics in 2014 to handle crude oil – a transfer that did not require public comment or a public hearing. Zenith did not respond to multiple phone messages or an email requesting more information about the volume and type of oil it has shipped from the facility, and its anticipated capacity once construction is complete. Zenith’s shipments may look like a blip compared to the 330 million barrels of oil exported from the Gulf Coast in 2017, but residents say it also carries unique risks to people and wildlife.
One study of an oil-by-rail terminal in Vancouver, called Vancouver Energy, concluded that the damage of a spill “could not be fully mitigated” – a finding that helped to scrap the project in 2018. When one 96-car train derailed in Mosier in 2016, the ensuing smoke and fire caused a city-wide evacuation. The response from local leaders was swift: A temporary ban on oil trains was requested by Gov. Kate Brown, Wyden and Merkley, and the Oregon Department of Transportation and the Yakama Nation called for an end to all fossil fuel shipments in the Columbia River Gorge. Earlier in 2013, the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians declared their opposition to all fossil fuel exports across the region on the grounds that they would harm human health, damage salmon habitat and destroy sacred places. Local policies against fossil fuel exports were later enacted in the city of Portland and King County, Wash., alongside temporary bans in Whatcom County and the Port of Tacoma tideflats.
Darrel Whipple, a resident of Rainier and co-chair of the community group Envision Columbia County, is frustrated with the changes at the Global Partners oil terminal at Port Westward in Columbia County.
“What we lack in Oregon is a process whereby major projects could be vetted and discussed and debated, with hearings held before the project is launched – a process Washington has (in its State Environmental Policy Act),” Whipple said. “I’m exasperated that the Port (of Columbia County) does not make a plan to reduce its own carbon footprint, and that of its tenants, and facilitate a rapid transition to a no-carbon economy. It’s all part of a mad rush to get fracked gas and fracked oil to market, regardless of serious safety concerns. The port is taking the risk on behalf of the public all along the rail route and through Columbia County.”
Starting in June 2012, Global Partners’ facility at Port Westward began handling oil without public notice, and apparently without tribal consultation. Last December, with less than 30 days’ notice, the port approved Global’s request to ship heavier oils, like the diluted bitumen from Canada’s tar sands – a change opposed by the majority of public comments.
Both Zenith and Global Partners can accommodate large Panamax ships at their facilities. Doug Hayes, executive director of the Port of Columbia County, told Street Roots that Global exported a total of 430,000 barrels of oil between 2012 to 2015 and has not exported any oil since that time. But according to Catie Kerns, a spokesperson for Global Partners, the company shipped just under 8 million barrels of oil from Port Westward during its peak shipping year in 2014 – far higher than the Port’s figure. Hayes was contacted about the discrepancy in numbers, but did not respond by press time.
The Port allows Global to receive 24 "unit" trains – those used for high-volume commodities – per month, and 38 total once rail improvements are made, which translates to between 1.7 million and 2.7 million barrels of oil per month. Kerns writes that the timing of such improvements are at the discretion of the P&W railroad, and declined to identify the destination of oil shipped from Port Westward, saying such information “is not publicly disclosed” but that shipments have been made “both domestically and internationally.”
When asked whether the combined impact of these industrial projects could change the local area, Port of Columbia County’s Doug Hayes said “There was no intention on port commissioners or the port to turn Port Westward into something that looks very similar to Newark, New Jersey.” Hayes added that the future of the area “will be somewhat different because we’ll be able to have a chance to bring jobs to the area.” According to local critics like Lichatowich, the Port’s investments have not produced many jobs: an estimate prepared by Lichatowich shows that Port Westward has spent $73 million in public money on infrastructure projects over the past 15 years and currently employs fewer than 80 people.
“There needs to be a comprehensive EIS (environmental impact study) of all these piecemeal projects before a big accident occurs,” said Paulette Lichatowich’s husband, Jim Lichatowich, a salmon expert and former chief of fisheries research for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. “2015 was the debut of climate change in the Columbia. We lost 90 percent of the sockeye salmon, and we need all of those salmon to keep the orca alive.”
Jim Lichatowich said a crude oil spill could poison fish in the river and that a heavy oil spill could sink and smother animals, eliminating much of the salmon’s food. He added that “where there’s been public hearings on these projects, they’ve been resoundingly rejected.”
The heavy oil now arriving in Portland (and permitted in Clatskanie) is sourced from the tar sands mines of Alberta, Canada. Canadian oil trains bound for the U.S. hit a three-year high in 2018, and just last month, the government of Alberta announced a $3.7 billion investment to move more oil trains to the U.S. following a string of obstacles to controversial projects such as the Keystone XL and TransMountain pipelines. Losing access to new markets has also helped make oil drilling in Alberta uneconomical, with its government mandating a 9 percent reduction in drilling across the entire province as of Jan. 1.
The fossil fuel industry as a whole continues to face very serious economic risks that make new investments dubious; one financial analysis from Carbon Tracker predicts that demand for fossil fuels will peak and decline in the 2020s, and an academic report published in the journal Nature Climate Change last year determined that fossil fuel companies will begin to fail before 2035 even in the absence of new climate policies. Its authors predicted that the greatest economic losses would occur in the U.S. and Canada – two countries heavily invested in extraction and exports, and recommended an end to such investments to limit the financial damage.
Oregon maintains the weakest safety standards for oil-by-rail among West Coast states, but several bills have been introduced this year to bring its safety standards closer to those of California and Washington. Most notable is House Bill 2209, introduced by the Committee on Veterans and Emergency Preparedness.
Oregon state Rep. Barbara Smith Warner (D-Portland), who pressed for similar legislation in 2017, said she is confident that one of these safety bills will finally pass this year.
“It’s going to have contingency plans and geographic response plans and require insurance coverage and have it be paid for by the railroads and not the general fund,” she said. “This will mean we’ll have a unified West Coast plan for managing these oil trains, and I think that’s really critically important.”
Jim Appleton, the former fire chief of Mosier who responded to the 2016 derailment, testified in favor of strengthening HB 2209 with amendments while renewing his call to ban oil trains at the federal level. Last April, British Columbia asked the Canadian courts for a declaration that they could ban oil by rail in the province.
Miles Johnson of the environmental advocacy group Columbia Riverkeeper said that a comprehensive review of fossil fuel projects in the lower Columbia River would be “eminently reasonable.”
“We don’t have a national energy policy about where and when we export fossil fuels,” Johnson said. “I’m glad they’re having this national conversation about a Green New Deal, but these are the decisions that will make or break our fossil fuel and climate change policies. Are we going to export? If we do, it’s hard to tell how we will meet the goals of the Green New Deal or the carbon budget.”
“It’s got to be a very deliberate process to wean us off of fossil fuels, but we have to have something in place of it,” Hayes said. “We have grown accustomed to how we currently live. It’s also like playing Russian Roulette, too, until someone can find a source of clean energy, or at least sustainable energy at levels that we are comfortable with.
“I’m kind of hoping more scientists get into this field to determine what can be out there to replace fossil fuels,” Hayes said.
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