By Fawn Sharp

President, Quinault Indian Nation

The Washington State Supreme Court has made an outstanding decision that will benefit the environment and the economy of the entire Grays Harbor County area, and beyond, for generations to come. And it’s about time.

The Jan. 12, decision should finally block the last proposed terminal that would have allowed crude oil to darken the future of our beautiful region here on the Pacific Coast.

It was the Westway/Contanda proposal, a project that would have meant a major expansion of unsafe trains moving millions of gallons of polluting and explosive crude oil through Grays Harbor every year.

The Quinault Indian Nation joins all of Grays Harbor in celebrating this monumental victory to keep crude oil out of our shared waters and ancestral territory. Like so many of our neighbors across the county, who have worked so hard with us to oppose this proposal, we envision a healthy and pristine natural environment and a thriving, clean and sustainable economy. After four very long years of fighting for those basic ideals, the State Supreme Court’s decision has hopefully closed the door on an obstinate obstacle to our collective vision.

The court ruled that the Ocean Resources Management Act, or ORMA, does apply to the Hoquiam-based proposal.

The City of Hoquiam was poised to issue a shoreline permit to the project, but this opinion now requires the state Department of Ecology to apply very stringent resource-protective criteria to the proposal — criteria such as assuring there is no reasonable alternative and there are no likely long-term significant adverse impacts from the project. ORMA also requires bonding to cover any impacts and rehabilitation, and compensation for any economic or environmental impacts. It is very doubtful that this project can meet those criteria, which means Westway/Contanda will not likely be permitted. This is a great victory that protects Grays Harbor and the entire Washington coastline from a project that would harm the environment and have both social and economic impacts.

The state high court justices overturned a lower court ruling that ORMA did not apply to oil shipping terminals. In doing so, the Supreme Court stated that ORMA is designed to address environmental threats to our coastal waters and specifically addresses the threats posed by increased expansion of the fossil fuel industry along the Pacific Coast. The court also stated that when legislators passed ORMA in the 1980s they intended it to combat current environmental dangers and to pre-emptively protect the coastline from future environmental risks.

Thus, as we applaud the Jan. 12, decision of the State Supreme Court, I wish to also acknowledge the contribution of the state legislators who had the wisdom to pass the ORMA legislation in 1989 and then-governor Booth Gardner who signed that bill. Three years prior, the United States Marine Minerals Management Service had announced oil and gas drilling leases on our Outer Continental Shelf. Most people in the state found the idea disturbing. They had heard stories about oil spills and beaches enmeshed with globs of oil and saturated sea birds. Many had seen the unsightly derricks off the shore of California. But there was little in state law at that time to stop them. The state only has jurisdiction three miles from shore.

Fortunately, as ORMA was being developed in the Legislature, the tribes came to the aid of the state, submitting in legislative hearings that treaty rights provide protection, and extend far enough into the ocean to encompass the Outer Continental Shelf. Tribal lobbyists and policy officials took part in every meeting and testified at every hearing, providing what some believed to be a unique opportunity for the state and the tribes to work together, cooperatively, toward a common objective. It worked.

Since then, more state/tribal cooperation has been applied to provide more safeguards to ocean protection and health, and develop additional processes and plans to improve coastal and ocean policy up and down the Pacific Coast. The efforts have resulted in the Marine Waters Planning and Management Act, the Washington Coastal Marine Advisory Council, the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative, the State Ocean Caucus and the West Coast Governor’s Alliance which has recently collaborated on regional priorities such as sea level rise, ocean acidification, marine debris and the development of a regional ocean data portal. Throughout all of these efforts, tribal governments have been present and cooperative, and the state and the tribes have worked diligently to develop a robust partnership.

The need for such cooperation is stronger than ever. The ocean is our life, and it is already suffering from the impacts of climate change, with huge warm areas that impact salmon runs, with pH imbalances caused by greenhouse gases and by pollution and debris of various kinds. Adding more oil spills on top of all this is truly something the world can do without.

We can’t fool ourselves. The world can’t quit using oil “cold turkey.” It just won’t happen.

But, like other tribes, we Quinaults are absolutely determined to learn from our ancestors, whose legacies are clear and adamant. We must respect our Mother Earth, and teach our children to do the same. To respect her we must listen to her, and she is telling us to do all we can to stop poisoning her air, land and waters and to get others to do the same. If we can’t quit fossil fuels, we must curtail them and focus on green energy. We have to consistently cut back, protect and restore habitat and be conservation minded.

So as we enter this new year, and as we witness the entrance of the new federal administration, we will pursue these objectives, and do whatever we can to encourage others to do the same.

So, yes, we celebrate the State Supreme Court’s decision to stop the Westway/Contanda terminal and the oil trains and supertankers it would have brought to our region. We thank everyone who worked so hard to help make this happen, and we ask all other governments, all businesses and all people to keep working with us to work with us to help our region prosper, on a sustainable basis.

We have seen some success. But we have a long way to go.

Fawn Sharp is president of the Quinault Indian Nation.