Tag: Gateway Pacific Terminal
By John Stark
Today, the Bellingham City Council will discuss a proposed letter to regulatory agencies outlining the economic and environmental impacts of the Gateway Pacific Terminal project that should be studied as part of the environmental impact statement process.
The full council will discuss the letter at a 2 p.m. Monday, Dec. 10 committee session in council chambers at City Hall, 210 Lottie St.
Read the full text of the five-page letter here.
The council is not scheduled to take final action on the letter. Instead, they will give city staffers direction on the next draft of the letter. The regulatory agencies — Whatcom County, Washington Department of Ecology and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — is accepting comments on the environmental impact statement scope until Jan. 21. 2013.
Have you sent yours in yet? Here’s a handy link.
By John Stark
Randel Perry, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ point man for environmental review of the Gateway Pacific Terminal, has shared his thoughts on the brouhaha over access to the microphone at recent “scoping meetings” to get public comment on what issues need study.
David Stalheim shared an email message from Perry that was sent to him and a number of other people. (An email like this from a public official discussing public business is legally subject to disclosure.)
Perry, who was at last week’s Ferndale scoping meeting, wrote:
“I also had discussions with a few people at the meeting about this issue. The concern expressed was that the project proponents had ‘stacked the deck’ for verbal comment. It’s interesting that we did not hear this complaint at the previous three meetings where project opponents used the same tactic to secure a majority of the verbal comment opportunities.
One of the people I talked to provided an interesting viewpoint. She was disappointed that ‘those people’ had dominated the public testimony and felt that we had not provided an adequate forum for public debate on the issue. It was her opinion that we should allocate a 50/50 split on the numbers between the pro and con factions to facilitate a balanced discussion on the issue and to ensure that we (co-leads) were not swayed in out permit decision by unbalanced input.
It was evident that her perception was based on what she believed the meetings were for as opposed to what we are trying to achieve. I explained to her the nature of scoping meetings, the types of constructive comments we were looking for (impacts, alternatives, etc.), and that all comments, regardless of how they are submitted or how often they are repeated, held equal weight.
I also explained that it was not the agencies’ job at scoping meetings to provide a public forum for debate or to facilitate a discussion on whether or not permits should be issued. Debates can be organized by other entities and the public will have future opportunities to express their opinions to the agencies on permit issuance.
I emphasized the fact that we had discussed various methods for allocating numbers and felt that the “first come, first serve” approach was the fairest. The problem has been the actions of other organizations who use our process to further their agenda and we have no control over this.
I think the solution to this is further outreach and public education. Maybe we need a stronger message up front, before the verbal comments session begins.” (end Perry email)
By John Stark
Opponents and supporters of the Gateway Pacific Terminal coal export pier packed a meeting in Spokane on Tuesday night to offer their comments and viewpoints on the environmental impact scoping process.
Spokane could potentially get a really big increase in rail traffic if Gateway Pacific and other export terminals are built, because much or all of that coal would likely be routed through the city.
The Spokane Spokesman-Review reports.
Backers of the terminal acknowledged they paid some people to hold some of the limited number of speaking slots in Spokane. Those slots are given to the first people waiting in line when doors open.
SSA Marine, the company proposing the terminal, did the same thing at the Nov. 29 meeting in Ferndale, SSA spokesman Craig Cole said in an email:
“The long lines and mid-day meetings make it impossible for working people, busy parents, elderly, and the disabled to get a slot to speak. An elderly supporter at Ferndale testified he had stood in line at Bellingham and never got a chance to speak, although he did catch pneumonia instead. We have had many supporters complain that they were being shut out of the process and asked for help in allowing their voices to be heard, especially in greater Whatcom County (the center of which is Ferndale) where support levels are in the majority and the venue is accessible. After we realized that our supporters were being prevented from testifying at earlier meetings, we took a page from the opposition strategy for the Ferndale meeting and had people hold spots in line for supporters wishing to speak. Some were paid temporary event set-up staff (who also handed out t-shirts and other materials and put up signs) and some were volunteers, just like opposition groups are doing.” (end Cole statement)
Another SSA spokesman, Gary Smith, emailed me a video clip in which a man in a tie-dyed shirt is talking to anti-terminal people getting off a bus in Spokane, and informing them he has people holding four places in line for tribal representatives.
Some will see a difference between paying people to stand in line, and having zealous volunteers ready to do it for free.
Former Bellingham Mayor Dan Pike, in a phone chat earlier today, feels that way.
“If you really can’t get folks that you claim are supporting you to show up and help out … then I think that shows something,” Pike said.
Pike also acknowledged that terminal opponents were holding places for other people in line at the Bellingham meeting at Squalicum High School on Oct. 27.
“I was in line and there were people ahead of me holding places for other people,” Pike said.
Pike also observed that the purpose of these meetings is to gather input on the issues that need to be included in the environmental impact statement. While public testimony in front of a microphone is a valuable part of that process, Pike doubts that many issues are in danger of being overlooked at this point, with written comments being submitted by the thousands.
“They probably have 99.9 percent of potential comments already entered,” Pike said.
At this point, opponents and backers of the terminal seem to agree that the process of allocating a limited number of open-mike opportunities has been aggravating.
“Speaking for myself only, I think the method of distributing speaker numbers has been frustrating to people on all sides,” Cole said. “It creates a competitive race to get in line early, and if you snooze, you lose. Without being critical of the agencies that are doing their best to facilitate input, it seems like a lottery system or something like that would be more orderly and equitable.”
Cole also reports that the public agencies, SSA spokesmen and project opponents are talking about what can be done to address the situation at this point.
Stay tuned.
By John Stark
At last week’s Gateway Pacific Terminal meeting in Ferndale, nearly all of the support for the Cherry Point coal export facility seemed to be based on its potential to create both jobs and tax revenue.
Supporters tend to portray Gateway Pacific as the only local project now on the table that could provide industrial jobs with decent wages, plus the millions of dollars in new tax revenues that heavy industries provide. More than one speaker mentioned the other G-P: the Georgia-Pacific pulp and paper mill on the Bellingham waterfront that subtracted hundreds of jobs when it closed down in stages during the first decade of this century.
Other pulp mills in the region, such as Kimberly-Clark in Everett, have also closed. (The Everett Herald observed that a town that once proudly called itself “The City of Smokestacks” no longer has any.) Alcoa Intalco Works still makes aluminum at Cherry Point, but similar smelters around the Northwest have been shut down for years.
We have heard so much about the decline of industry in this country that we tend to think of U.S. industrial prowess in the past tense. We all know that U.S. manufacturing simply can’t compete against low-wage workers in China. It’s hopeless.
But what if what we all know is wrong? In the current issue of Atlantic Monthly, Charles Fishman digs up some encouraging news: Major U.S. companies are discovering that in many cases, it is cheaper to manufacture products in the United States, despite the wage differential. Fishman’s example is General Electric, an old-line pillar of U.S. industry that is ramping up appliance production in Louisville, Ky. at a giant manufacturing complex that had become a near-ghost town until recently. Appliances once built in China are now rolling off the line in the Bluegrass State again. And make no mistake: Patriotism has nothing to do with it. Fishman describes in vivid detail how GE is saving money and making its products more price-competitive by bringing jobs home.
In the same issue of The Atlantic, James Fallows describes the same phenomenon from his own vantage point in China. He describes the pitfalls for U.S. firms trying to manufacture in China, and the competitive edge that many smaller firms achieve by keeping designing and manufacturing side by side in this country.
But China does enjoy another competitive advantage: cheap energy. In this country, the cost of environmental controls add to the cost of energy used for manufacturing. China, with fewer environmental constraints, gets an economic edge.
It’s an edge that the U.S. could blunt with one fell swoop, says economist Jeff Rubin. In his book “Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller,” Rubin says the U.S. could impose a countervailing tariff — a carbon tax, if you will — to make Chinese manufacturers pay the true global cost of their carbon emissions. That would shift more jobs back to North America, argues Rubin, a former chief economist at big Canadian bank CIBC. It’s also an idea that appeals to both labor unions and environmental activists.
Larry Horowitz, who alerted me to Rubin’s book, provides a link to this excerpt from the Montreal Gazette.
What does all this have to do with the local debate over Gateway Pacific? Maybe it’s a bit of a reach, but I can’t help but wonder if this project would look different to some people if the overall outlook for industrial jobs did not seem so bleak.
Is Whatcom County well-situated to benefit from the shift of manufacturing back to this country–assuming that this shift lives up to the expectations that Fishman’s article creates? Maybe not. This county’s industries have generally been extractive and resource-based: Coal, lumber, paper pulp, seafood processing, aluminum, petroleum.
GE’s Louisville plant enjoys a strategic, central location for access to retail markets. Whatcom County’s location is the opposite of central. What do you think?
By John Stark
A coal terminal in Seward, Alaska is laying off some workers because managers say there has been a drop in demand for its coal in Asia and elsewhere.
In this report from the Seward Phoenix, Usibelli Coal Mine vice president Robert Brown says he expects the slowdown to be temporary. Usibelli oversees the coal terminal operation, according to the report.
By John Stark
Many Gateway Pacific Terminal opponents seem to be furious that backers of the project — in their words — “hijacked” the Thursday, Nov. 29 Ferndale scoping meeting.
GPT backers did show up in force in an obviously well-organized effort to dominate the public testimony at the meeting. This strikes some opponents of GPT as unfair and underhanded. I just got off the phone with a person who assured me that every green-shirted supporter of GPT at Thursday’s meeting had been paid by SSA Marine to be there.
I have fired off an email to Gateway Pacific spokesman Craig Cole to see what he has to say about that.
Let me volunteer three observations:
–1. Thursday was a scoping meeting. It was a not a town hall affair intended to gauge the level of public support or opposition for the project. It was part of a process to gauge what specific issues should be studied as part of the permitting process. Some opponents and some backers of the project seemed to understand this. Some did not.
In any event, both supporters and opponents have until Jan. 21, 2013 to send in scoping comments to the regulatory agencies. Agency personnel insist that written comments get the same weight as those spoken into a microphone, even though written comments may offer far less emotional satisfaction to the commenter.
Here’s where to send written comments:
By email: comments@eisgatewaypacificwa.gov.
By mail: GPT/Custer Spur EIS, 1100 112th Ave. NE, Suite 400, Bellevue, WA 98004.
–2. Lots of people in Whatcom County are supportive of Gateway Pacific. You might not like that, but it is awfully hard to deny.
–3. Demeaning the character or the intelligence of those people is a dubious political strategy. It strikes me as morally dubious too.
My personal belief is that the industrial civilization that provides the power to run this blog is going to have to undergo some dramatic changes in the near future if we want to avoid any of several possible collapse scenarios.
But as of now, the progressives who show up at public meetings to try to promote those changes are, in effect, asking other people to make some significant short-term financial sacrifices for the good of the cause. Those other people — longshoremen, construction workers, coal miners, etc. — are not enthusiastic about this.
Is there any way of addressing the concerns of these working people, while also addressing the real need to move as rapidly as possible to a sustainable energy system? Is riding roughshod over union labor the only practical course of action? I don’t pretend to have answers to those questions.
P.S. Update: I just got an email from a union carpenter who says she is opposed to GPT. I’m sure there are others like her out there. I hope you’ll comment here, or contact me directly if you prefer.
By John Stark
Based on Facebook posts I’m seeing, Gateway Pacific Terminal foes are hyperventilating over the fact that those who support the big coal pier are already lining up outside the Ferndale Events Center on Barrett Road to potentially claim all the available public speaking spots at the environmental scoping meeting that starts at 3 p.m. today, Nov. 29.
Update at 12:50: Here’s a photo posted to FB by terminal backers.
Looks like the union and business people backing the project leanred their lesson on Oct. 27, when environmentalists showed up to stand in the rain for more than two hours outside Squalicum High School for the scoping meeting there.
Maybe both sides can console themselves with the fact that both written and oral testimony on scoping issues is being accepted by regulatory agencies, and the agencies promise that comments into a microphone get no extra weight.
By email: comments@eisgatewaypacificwa.gov.
By mail: GPT/Custer Spur EIS, 1100 112th Ave. NE, Suite 400, Bellevue, WA 98004.
Comments are being accepted through Jan. 21, 2013.
By John Stark
Backers of Gateway Pacific Terminal say they have gathered 10,000 petition signatures in support of the coal export facility proposed at Cherry Point.
They plan to deliver those petition signatures to the Whatcom County Executive’s office in the County Courthouse at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 27., according to a press release from Northwest Jobs Alliance:.
Here is the press release:
Labor, business and civic leaders will deliver to the Whatcom County Courthouse over 10,000 petition signatures and other messages of support for the Gateway Pacific Terminal project and the expansion of U.S. export capacity.
The delivery will take place at the County Executive’s office on Tuesday, November 27th at 10 am. A statement will be issued at that time addressing the need, as expressed by thousands of citizens, for balanced consideration of all environmental issues, including economic issues and local government services.
End press release
By John Stark
If you only talked to Bellingham’s citizen activists, you would probably expect the Port of Bellingham commission expansion measure to pass handily. But the Port of Bellingham is really the port of Whatcom County, and the expansion measure is getting a 51 percent no vote as of now.
That margin is small enough to be in jeopardy as further votes are counted, but the chances of a reversal are rather small at this point.
The 42nd District House results may provide further evidence that Gateway Pacific Terminal is not as widely hated as some people believe. Opponents of the terminal turn out in impressive numbers for every public meeting on the issue, and they deride SSA Marine’s polls showing a majority of county residents favor the project.
But when 42nd District voters had the chance to vote for Matt Krogh, a prominent early critic of the terminal, they chose Vincent Buys instead, by a 54 percent margin. Not to say that this race was a referendum on a single issue, but it’s hard to see much evidence that opposition to the terminal is getting much traction outside Bellingham.
By John Stark
With emotions running high for the Saturday, Oct. 27 public session on a prop0sed Cherry Point coal export terminal, key leaders of the pro- and anti-coal export movements have joined in a call for civility.
Crina Hoyer, executive director of RE Sources for Sustainable Communities, and Mark Lowry, president of the Northwest Washington Central Labor Council, issued this statement:
“As community leaders, we value public process, civil discourse, and the open exchange of ideas. For the upcoming scoping process for the Gateway Pacific Terminal project, we commit to behaving with the utmost respect, professionalism, and civility to each other and to the government officials involved in this process. We ask you to join us and commit to the same set of standards.”
Environmentalists say they expect more than 1,000 people to gather for a 10 a.m. rally outside Squalicum High School, 3773 E. McLeod Road, in advance of the 11 a.m. -to-3 p.m. Saturday “scoping meeting” to give interested people a chance to weigh in on what environmental and economic issues should get study as part of the lengthy process of deciding whether the Gateway Pacific Terminal can be built in conformance with local, state and federal environmental regulations.
Labor unions and others who support the terminal for its jobs and tax revenues are also expected to turn out.
By John Stark
The ” Safeguard the South Fork” organization is offering training sessions meant to help people submit meaningful comments during the “scoping process” that will determine what environmental issues get scrutiny as the impact from the proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal project gets study.
The sessions are scheduled for 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 15, and 10 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 3. Both sessions are in the Deming Library at 5044 Mount Baker Highway.
For more information, contact Jeff Margolis, Co-Chairman of Safeguard the South Fork, at 592-2297, or email goodbuy@everybodys.com
” The Whatcom County Office of Planning and Development Services and the Army Corps of Engineers distinguish ‘comments’ from ‘opinions and sentiments’ and accept significant comments only,” the organization says in a press release. ” These sessions will assist participants in presenting themselves effectively. “
By John Stark
The White House Council on Environmental Quality is getting involved in key issues surrounding the environmental review of potential impacts from the Gateway Pacific Terminal project proposed for Whatcom County, as well as other proposed Northwest coal terminals.
That report comes from Bloomberg BNA, a subsidiary of Bloomberg News Service that focuses on legal and regulatory issues. The reporter Paul Shukovsky, formerly of the Seattle P-I. He says the White House council called a meeting of senior agency officials to discuss their diverging views on environmental issues.
“The crux of the conflict is whether the administration will accede to demands from opponents of the export terminals that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers go beyond site-specific environmental impact statements for the five proposed projects and conduct a wide-ranging study of the cumulative impacts of all the projects together, including the effect on greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of U.S. coal in China and other Asian countries,” Shukovsky reports.
Apparently the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is having trouble with the notion of including grennhouse gas emissions on the list of environmental impacts to be studied, because there is no precedent for it.
Environmental groups and many other Bellingham residents have called for the widest possible analysis of Gateway Pacific’s impacts.
From Stark
An official at Ambre Energy has told Oregon legislators that the company no longer expects to be able to ship coal to the Far East from its planned Morrow Pacific project on the Columbia River by 2013.
The project’s proponent, Ambre Energy, has pushed back the estimated startup date to mid-2014, citing the complexities of the permit process.
Ambre still hopes that its coal export terminal will be the first one in the Northwest to get up and running.
Closer to home, SSA Marine spokesmen have said they hope to have the Gateway Pacific Terminal operating at Cherry Point by 2016, but the environmental study process for that complex facility has yet to begin in earnest.
From Stark
Writing in Sightline Daily, analyst Eric de Place notes recent weakness in Chinese demand for coal. He suggests that industry analysts may have exaggerated China’s potential coal appetite, and proposed Northwest coal export terminals like Gateway Pacific in Whatcom County may not make economic sense.
De Place’s essay includes links to several articles in financial news outlets, noting weak coal demand in China.
In this Reuters report, Greg Boyce, chairman and chief executive of coal giant Peabody Energ, acknowledges a downturn but says the long-term outlook for Chinese coal demand remains strong.
From Stark
Communitywise Bellingham and Whatcom Docs are seeking private grant funding for an independent study of potential health impacts from the Gateway Pacific Terminal coal shipping pier proposed for Cherry Point.
At Monday’s City Council meeting, council member Michael Lilliquist will ask his colleagues to consider drafting a letter of support for the grant application being prepared by the two groups.
Here’s a link to the City Council’s agenda packet item that explains what’s going on. The City Council is scheduled to discuss the matter in committee at 1:40 p.m. Monday, Sept. 9, in chambers at City Hall, 210 Lottie St.
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