By Lee First
In another defeat for the Port of Grays Harbor, BHP Billiton announced Sept. 4, 2020, that it is withdrawing its permit applications for a proposed potash export facility at Terminal 3 in Hoquiam. According to a Port of Grays Harbor press release, BHP blamed “continuous local stakeholder concerns and ongoing regulatory hurdles with no resolution or permit completion timeline in sight.” This announcement comes just three years after the Port of Grays Harbor publicly announced that shipping crude oil by rail and sea from its docks was “off the table” with the withdrawal of Contanda Grays Harbor and REG crude terminal projects.
The good news, for those of us who live on Grays Harbor who have been attending meetings, hearings and writing comment letters since 2015, is our voices were heard loud and clear. And our regulations, permits and environmental protection processes worked. But, it is also a hollow victory, because Grays Harbor County needs the economic development, now more than ever. Its unemployment rate was 14% in July 2020. If we want to achieve sustainable economic growth then we must stop selling our region short.
Potash is the main ingredient in industrial fertilizer. The company exploring the terminal was BHP Billiton, the second largest mining company in the world. It is developing a huge underground potash mine near Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. From there, BHP’s plan was to ship heavy train cars full of potash (rocks) 1,200 miles to Hoquiam, load huge bulk-carriers, exit the bar, and on to world fertilizer plants.
The site of the proposed potash terminal
Negotiations between the Port, Quinault Nation and the permitting agencies had gone on for five years, and then BHP abruptly announced it was withdrawing the application. Instead, BHP states it is looking into Frasier Surrey Docks in British Columbia and several other terminals on the northwest coast of North America. We have warned our neighbors.
What can we learn from the recent rejection of two major Port of Grays Harbor development projects for crude oil and potash? Is it really the fault of stakeholders, the permitting process and environmental regulations, or is there something else going on?
I’ve thought hard and long about why so many Grays Harbor residents opposed the BHP terminal as I listened to lots of testimony during the hearings. What have I learned from this?
1. Fix the railroad infrastructure to eliminate potential accidents.
A few years ago, during the crude oil terminal threat, I looked at every single over water (bridge) crossing that the trains would have to cross in Grays Harbor County, and there are a lot of them. At that time, up to a quarter of these bridges were in poor condition. A lot of heavy trains would be traveling over 1,200 miles to get to Grays Harbor. How could we protect our waters with all the heavy trains crossing bridges?
2. Solve some of the sediment problem by stopping it at its source.
Sedimentation is a natural process, but relying on continual harbor dredging to keep the navigation channel open costs money, harms the environment and has a negative impact on Grays Harbor dependent industries. Any proposal that brings more bulk carriers with deeper draft ships to the harbor will result in deeper and more frequent dredging. More shipping traffic increases the risk of groundings and potential spills as ships cross the Chehalis River bar. Our shoreline is already extremely degraded, and the dredging is very hard on aquatic life. How would our local oyster growers fare? Why not stop the sediment at its source?
3. Protect and support tribal treaty rights from the start.
Let’s stop proposing development that is in direct conflict with tribal rights. This is time consuming and unproductive.
4. Protect what is unique about Grays Harbor from the start.
Grays Harbor is home to vibrant shellfish, crab and fishing industries, and internationally significant shorebird habitat. The Grays Harbor National Wild Refuge is internationally known as significant shorebird habitat. Thousands of tourists visit the refuge annually to participate in festivals, making it an economic engine of this community. Cumulative impacts of noise, light, traffic, dust, air pollution, and stormwater pollution would have a huge negative impact on the birds. Potash is a salt -what if a potash spill occurred during the bird migration season? What would be the impact on shellfish, crab, and fish?
5. Clean up toxic contaminated industrial sites now. The number of State-listed Toxic Cleanup sites on our waterfront is staggering. Take a look at them at https://apps.ecology.wa.gov/neighborhood/. Almost none have been cleaned up. Compensatory mitigation for the BHP Billiton project would have been required. Where and how could this project be mitigated? The proponents said they’d “restore” the Port’s property called IDD1. But this site is listed as a toxic cleanup site by the Department of Ecology. If we want to attract new economic growth these toxic industrial sites need to be cleaned up. The Port should stop stalling and step up.
The permitting process is not onerous if we are clear from the start with what we want economic development to look like. We do not need to pit economics against stakeholders and the environment. A good healthy environment promotes and supports economic development that improves our community. Big international corporations will prey on our willingness to ignore stakeholders, harm the environment, and will water down the regulatory process. We can and should set the bar much higher.
Lee First is the Twin Harbors Waterkeeper, based in Cosmopolis. Waterkeepers are part of the International Waterkeeper Alliance, which includes over 360 organizations around the world working “for swimmable, drinkable water worldwide.”
