A map by Cliff Mass illustrating with colored dots the parts of the country most likely to be affected by various aspects of climate change. Cliff Mass
The climate change models aren’t pretty: from increased storm strength to sea level rise, and heat waves to pervasive drought, the next century could prove to be very different, climate-wise, from the last.
But according to a recent synthesis of these models, the Northwest could fare better than the rest of the country.
Cliff Mass, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, says that whether you look at temperature, sea rise, drought dangers, or likelihood of severe storms, the Northwest seems like an oasis of relative stability compared to the rest of the U.S.
Does that mean that we can expect a big in-migration of climate change refugees, as some studies have explored?
We’ll talk to Cliff Mass about what the models show, and what they could mean for the future of the region.
Tracy Rector/Longhouse Media The Heiltsuk First Nation is hosting 31 canoes from Pacific Northwest indigenous nations. That number was provided by the manager of the Paddle to Bella Bella Facebook page. Canoes arrived July 13; the week of cultural celebration continues through July 19.
En route to the territory of the Heiltsuk First Nation, pullers in the 2014 Canoe Journey traveled through territory so beautiful it will be impossible to forget: Rugged, forested coastlines; island-dotted straits and narrow, glacier-carved passages; through Johnstone Strait, home of the largest resident pod of orcas in the world, and along the shores of the Great Bear Rainforest, one of the largest remaining tracts of unspoiled temperate rainforest left in the world.
They also traveled waters that are increasingly polluted and under threat.
Pullers traveled the marine highways of their ancestors, past Victoria, British Columbia, which dumps filtered, untreated sewage into the Salish Sea. They traveled the routes that U.S. energy company Kinder Morgan plans to use to ship 400 tanker loads of heavy crude oil each year.
Canoes traveling from the north passed the inlets leading to Kitimat, where heavy crude from Enbridge Inc.’s Northern Gateway pipeline would be loaded onto tankers bound for Asia, a project that Canada approved on June 17.
Canoes from the Lummi Nation near Bellingham passed Cherry Point, a sacred and environmentally sensitive area where Gateway Pacific proposes a coal train terminal; early site preparation was done without permits and desecrated ancestral burials.
Canoes from Northwest indigenous nations arrived in Bella Bella, British Columbia on July 13; the gathering continues until July 19 with cultural celebrations, a rally against Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline, and an indigenous economic summit. The ceremonies are being livestreamed online at Tribal Canoe Journeys 2014 :: Qatuwas Bella Bella.
Mike Williams Sr., chief of the Yupiit Nation and member of the board of First Stewards, noted that the Canoe Journey route calls attention to the fragile environment that’s at stake. First Stewards, an indigenous environmental advocacy group, will host a symposium on “Sustainability, Climate Change & Traditional Places” from July 21–23 in Washington, D.C.
“The Canoe Journey is a really big statement to us to hang onto our culture and our way of life, and to bind people together,” said Williams, who is also a well-known musher. “In the Iditarod, there are pristine places but there are also old mining towns [on the route] where we’re told not to drink the water.”
The parallels between the water issues encountered on the Iditarod and the Canoe Journey are unmistakable, he added.
“In the Canoe Journey, there are pristine waters and there are waters that contains toxic substances,” Williams said. “There’s oil and the continuous leaking of pipelines. It happens.”
Not only does it happen, but it does not go away. Prince William Sound has never totally recovered from the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Williams said. Likewise, he added, if the Northern Gateway pipeline, the coal trains and increased shipping come to fruition, an environmental disaster is inevitable.
“It’s going to happen,” Williams said. “There has to be total, thoughtful conversation for everyone—consider all the possible impacts. And there has to be meaningful consultation with the tribes. They have to weigh in on that. We’ve got to make it 100 percent fail-safe or don’t do it.”
The Heiltsuk First Nation’s hosting of the 2014 Canoe Journey included a rally against the Enbridge pipeline. Canoes arrived in Bella Bella, B.C., on July 13; the week of cultural celebration continues through July 19. (Photo: Tracy Rector/Longhouse Media)
State Senator John McCoy, D-Tulalip, is a citizen of the Tulalip Tribes. He is the ranking member of the Senate Energy, Environment & Telecommunications Committee, which focuses on such issues as climate change, water quality, toxic chemical use reduction and cleanup, and management of storm water and wastewater.
“I think the message is, pollution is occurring everywhere,” McCoy said of the takeaway from the Canoe Journey. “It’s a worldwide problem, and it needs to be addressed. If we keep polluting our water, we’re going to be in big trouble. Water is the essence of life.”
Canoes were underway for Bella Bella on July 9 as Governor Jay Inslee announced that he wants to increase the recommended fish-consumption rate in the state from 6.5 grams to 175 grams a day—that’s good news for indigenous peoples, for whom fish is important culturally, spiritually and as a food. But for 175 grams of fish to be considered safe to eat, businesses that pollute will have to conform to tougher pollution control standards.
Inslee’s plan for how toxic substances will be controlled in expected in December. It will require legislation, McCoy said.
Jewell James is coordinator of the Lummi Treaty Protection Task Force and a leader in the effort to prevent a coal train terminal from being built at Cherry Point, a sacred area for the Lummi people and an important spawning ground for herring, an important food for salmon.
James said environmental degradation is just part of a series of historical traumas set upon Indigenous Peoples: First, the diseases that came after contact; then the treaty era and the relocation to reservations; then the cultural and spiritual oppression of the boarding school era, and then the termination era.
“Yet we continue to exist,” James said. And the Canoe Journey, now in its 23rd year, has helped “revitalize and breathe new life into our cultural knowledge” given that journey gatherings are venues for the passing down of stories about how the ancestors lived in and cared for the environment that sustained them.
James hopes people on the Canoe Journey connect with and carry on those stories and values.
“There are messages in those stories,” he said. “And within those stories there are sacred symbols that mean something—that you have to be careful with what you do, and others have to be careful with what they do, to Mother Earth.”
An ancient First Nations ritual steeped in symbolism is going to take place in the nation’s capital this summer.
by Carlito Pablo on Jun 25, 2014, Straight.com, Vancouver BC
First Nations carver Beau Dick says a copper shield, like the one he holds, will be shattered in Ottawa in a symbolic gesture of anguish. Carlito Pablo
A copper shield will be smashed on Parliament Hill, an act believed never to have been done before in Ottawa. Called copper cutting, the ceremonial shaming practice will evoke what many consider to be a broken relationship between the federal government and Canada’s aboriginal people.
“Our coppers are a symbol of justice, a symbol of truth, a symbol of balance,” according to Beau Dick, a renowned carver from Vancouver Island’s Namgis First Nation.
At his UBC studio, the resident artist in the department of art history, visual art, and theory explained that breaking copper constituted an insult in old times.
“It is banishment. It is an expression of extreme disappointment and anguish,” Dick explained to the Georgia Straight.
The ritual, indigenous to Natives of the Pacific Northwest, had not been practised for decades until the 59-year-old artist revived it last year.
After marching for a week from the northern tip of Vancouver Island with relatives and supporters, Dick shattered a copper shield in front of the B.C. legislature in Victoria on February 10, 2013.
During a gathering at UBC later last year to celebrate his artist residency, the idea was born to perform the ceremony in Ottawa. One of those present at that social event was Giindajin Haawasti Guujaaw. Also a famous carver, Guujaaw is a former president of the Council of the Haida Nation.
When aboriginal representatives meet on Parliament Hill on July 27 for the shaming ceremony, it will be Haida copper that will be split.
“We’re facing a federal government here that has shown total disregard for the environment, for the wildlife, for the people of the coast, and we want to express that in the best way that we can and that’s in the breaking of the copper,” Guujaaw told the Straight in a phone interview.
Foremost among the grievances is Ottawa’s recent approval of Enbridge Inc.’s Northern Gateway oil pipeline, a $7.9-billion project that has divided First Nations in B.C.
“It’s a one-show pony over there. They’re only interested in oil,” Guujaaw noted.
The Haida artist also mentioned cutbacks to Fisheries and Oceans Canada undermining the conservation of marine resources that many Native groups rely upon for food and cultural purposes. Guujaaw said he doesn’t expect anything to change on the part of the government anytime soon.
As to what aboriginal people want to put across to Ottawa, Guujaaw said: “The message will be the ceremony.”
In the past, copper was a marker of Native wealth and status, according to Eldon Yellowhorn, chair of SFU’s department of First Nations studies. When chiefs held a potlatch, the metal was given as a gift, said Yellowhorn, who hails from Alberta’s Piikani First Nation.
Although the planned breaking of copper may be symbolic, he noted that it’s indicative of Native sentiment about processes around projects such as oil pipelines. “Many of them feel that they haven’t been consulted,” Yellowhorn told the Straight by phone, “so I’m sure this is a way of illustrating to the government that they’re not pleased.”
Like broken metal, frayed relationships can be restored, but there should be amends, according to Dick. “There has to be atonement,” he said.
On Wednesday (July 2), Dick and Guujaaw will meet at the UBC First Nations House of Learning for ceremonies to kick-start a cross-country journey to Ottawa. Dick’s five-year-old grandson and an almost 90-year-old aunt are coming along.
“We as a First Nation group want to move forward together in unity with our fellow men to create a better world,” Dick said. “I think that this is where we start this notion of reconciliation and unity.”
PORTLAND–This morning, climate justice activists with Portland Rising Tide shut down the ArcLogistics crude oil terminal in Northwest Portland.
Portland resident Irene Majorie, 22, locked herself to a 55-gallon barrel filled with concrete that was placed on the railroad track leading into the facility. Train cars enter from a nearby yard to offload oil into 84 storage tanks, before it is piped onto oceangoing ships bound for West Coast refineries.
Majorie’s arm is locked to a piece of metal rebar embedded in the Attempts by law enforcement to move her and the barrel simultaneously would likely result in grave injury; likewise, any train traffic would threaten her life.
Irene Majorie this morning
“This is about stopping the oil trains,” said Majorie. “But beyond that, it is about an industry and an economic system that places the pursuit of profit before the lives and relationships of human beings seeking survival
and nourishment, and before the communities, ecosystems, and planet of which we are a part.”
Oil trains are coming under increasing scrutiny recently owing to their propensity to derail in fiery explosions. Portland Rising Tide, however, disputes the notion that an oil train is ever safe, since crude oil is only transported to be burned. Whatever the risk of explosion, the guaranteed result is a worsening of the climate crisis, which is already wreaking ecological havoc and claiming human lives.
US crude oil production has risen from ~5 million barrels per day in the late 2000s to ~7 million barrels per day currently. Increased extraction is North Dakota’s Bakken Shale has resulted in a dramatic rise in oil train traffic, with 250% more oil trains traveling Oregon rail lines in 2013 than in the previous year. Governor Kitzhaber has expressed “deep concern” about oil trains but thus far done nothing to stop them.
“Society should be engaged in a rapid, radical decline in fossil fuel use,” said David Bennett. “Instead, policymakers—even those who claim to understand the magnitude of the climate crisis—are forcing us to engage in an absurd conversation about creating ‘safe’ oil trains and building more fossil fuel infrastructure.”
The ArcLogistics terminal, which began operation in January, is one piece of infrastructure facilitating increased oil production. When ongoing construction is completed, the facility will have the capacity to transport 16,250 barrels of oil per day.
In April, Portland Rising Tide entered the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality’s offices in downtown Portland, issued termination letters to employees at their desks, and announced the formation of a new People’s Agency, which would carry out DEQ’s mandate free of corporate influence. This is the first enforcement action of the nascent agency.
“If our policymakers listened, we would demand an immediate halt to oil train traffic in Oregon and the closure of all crude oil terminals,” said Emma Gould. “Since they don’t, we’re halting oil trains ourselves.”
Activists at the ArcLogistics crude oil terminal in Northwest Portland today.
Darla Antoine Darla Antoine’s son Cuen holds a basket of strawberries he helped pick.
Darla Antoine, Indian Country Today
It’s no secret that kids who help plant a garden are more likely to want to eat the fruits and vegetables that it produces—and growing a garden is a great way to get your kids interested in trying unfamiliar foods.
Whether you’re thinking of spearheading a school garden, you’ve got a plot in the community garden or you’re blessed to have a couple of raised beds in your own back yard, here are five tips for making gardening fun, easy and rewarding for your little ones:
1. Center the Garden on the Kids
Involve the kids in deciding what to plant and where to plant it. Use this as an opportunity to teach them about the balance between sunlight and shade, and even to help them learn to track to the path of the sun. You could even experiment and plant the same kind of plant or seed in three different locations with varying access to sunlight and water. Ask your children to observe the differences in the plants as they grow.
2. Designate a Specific Area for Their Gardening
If you’ve got your own ambitions for gardening it would be wise to designate a special bed or section of a bed specifically for the children to garden. This will keep them from over “helping” you and encourage them to take ownership over their own space. It may be a good idea to buy them their own gardening tools as well. Even simple plastic tools for playing in the sand could work well in a kiddie garden.
3. Make the Garden Interactive
Plant flowers that attract butterflies and hummingbirds and perhaps even encourage a cutting garden so that the kids can touch and smell the flowers. Release ladybugs into the garden and track their life cycle. Take photos of a favorite plant or vegetable once a week to track its growth. My favorite idea? Plant a sunflower house. Simply plant sunflower seeds or starts in a large circle, leaving enough space between two of the sunflowers for children to easily pass through without damaging the flowers. By the end of the summer the sunflowers will have grown up into a large round “house” with a gaping door—a perfectly shaded playhouse for the dog days of summer.
4. Keep it Simple
Your kids are likely to be more interested in the garden if they begin to see results sooner rather than later. Be sure to plant vegetables that grow quickly, like radishes, alongside more tantalizing varieties that will prove to be worth the wait, such as cherry tomatoes or sweet peas. Forgo seeds for starts to speed the “fruits of our labor” process up a bit more and don’t forget to plant herbs, which are ready to eat almost immediately.
5. Don’t Stop at the Garden
Use the garden as a resource and an excuse to get your kids in the kitchen all summer long too. Teach them how to cook and prepare delicious meals with the vegetables and herbs that they grew—even set the dinner table with a bouquet of fresh flowers from the garden as well. Begin to teach them delicious and simple food pairings, like fresh basil with tomato. If they’re old enough challenge them to find a new recipe once a week, whether they scour the web, your cookbooks or their imagination.
Happy Gardening!
Darla Antoine is an enrolled member of the Okanagan Indian Band in British Columbia and grew up in Eastern Washington State. For three years, she worked as a newspaper reporter in the Midwest, reporting on issues relevant to the Native and Hispanic communities, and most recently served as a producer for Native America Calling. In 2011, she moved to Costa Rica, where she currently lives with her husband and their infant son. She lives on an organic and sustainable farm in the “cloud forest”—the highlands of Costa Rica, 9,000 feet above sea level. Due to the high elevation, the conditions for farming and gardening are similar to that of the Pacific Northwest—cold and rainy for most of the year with a short growing season. Antoine has an herb garden, green house, a bee hive, cows, a goat, and two trout ponds stocked with hundreds of rainbow trout.
HOQUIAM, Wash. — More than 100 people gathered at the local high school Thursday night with questions and concerns about proposals to build train-to-ship oil terminals in their community.
The projects proposed for Grays Harbor are part of a regional increase in oil train traffic from North Dakota to the Pacific Northwest. And although the Bakken oil fields are more than 1,000 miles away, the boom is raising a lot of concern in this small city on Washington’s coast.
The Westway and Imperium terminals would be serviced by roughly two trains per day, each one a mile long. Their payloads of crude oil would bring more than 300 ships and barges to Grays Harbor each year year.
The third and newest project, proposed by US Development, could draw three or four trains per week and up to 60 vessels per year, each 1,000 feet long. If all three terminals are built, Grays Harbor would have storage capacity for almost 3 million barrels of oil.
“Any oil that spilled within Grays Harbor or in transit will end up on our shorelines and it will directly impact the crab fishery,” said Larry Thevik, vice president of the Washington Dungeness Crab Fisherman’s Association, which opposes the projects. Thevik has been crabbing these waters for more than 40 years.
The crowd at Hoquiam High School quieted as the Washington Department of Ecology called people one by one to weigh in on what should be considered in the environmental review of the proposed oil terminals.
Fawn Sharp, president of the Quinault Tribe, was one of the first to step up to the microphone. Her tribe’s reservation is about 35 miles north of Hoquiam.
“Quinault opposes oil in Grays Harbor and is in this fight to win,” she told the officials. “Our fishing hunting and gathering rights are clearly jeopardized by immediate and cumulative impacts of these proposed developments.”
The crowd was dominated by opponents. No one spoke out in favor of the oil terminals during the first portion of the meeting.
Some in the audience voiced fears about the potential for Bakken oil to explode, as it did when a train derailed in Quebec last summer, killing 47 people.
Other residents called on the Washington Department of Ecology to study how the potential uptick in train and ship traffic could impact noise, human health and pollution – as well as local traffic and fire and spill response.
Three of Washington’s five oil refineries are now receiving oil by rail, with 2 more oil-by-rail expansion projects recently proposed. The trains servicing the refineries travel along the Columbia River and then north through Seattle and along Puget Sound.
Oil also travels to the refinery in Clatskanie, Ore. A larger oil terminal is proposed for nearby Vancouver, Wash., which could draw up to four more trains per day, along the Columbia River.
What’s Next
The public has until May 27 to submit comments on the two proposed facilities. A second public meeting is scheduled for next Tuesday from 5 to 9 p.m. at Centralia High School in Centralia, Wash.
An estimated 22,000 gray whales will swim past Washington’s coastline during the next few weeks as they migrate thousands of miles to rich feeding grounds near Alaska.
A dozen or more of the giant creatures are expected to spend a few months in Puget Sound as they bulk up for the trip.
The whales don’t eat while spending the winter in their breeding grounds in Mexico’s Baja Peninsula or in the Gulf of California, so fuel stops are needed as they travel 5,000 to 6,500 miles to the Bering and Chukchi seas in the Arctic.
The Pacific Whale Watching Association calls it the longest migration of any mammal on Earth, with the whales traveling at about five knots and averaging 75 miles a day on the trip.
There have been a couple sightings of whales in the Sound already this year, so whale-watching season has officially begun.
Island Adventures Whale Watching, which offers three-hour trips from the Port of Everett, begins operations on Saturday and will continue until May 18.
California gray whales are sizable creatures, reaching an estimated 45 feet in length and weighing as much as 40 tons. They can live for decades.
Olympia-based Cascadia Research has been studying the small but growing group of grays in Puget Sound since 1990. It has identified whales that visit the Sound every year, feeding in shallow tide flats around Everett and Whidbey and Camano islands for sand shrimp. In addition to the regulars, there are also usually a few transients.
The resident whales regularly visit Mission Beach on the Tulalip Tribes Reservation, rolling in the shallows during high tide to stir up the beach and using their baleen plates to separate the shrimp from the water and sand.
They can eat about a ton of shrimp a day, according to the institute.
Michael Harris of the whale-watching association said the population of gray whales is growing, which could be good news for local whale watchers.
“We’re fortunate that we get about a dozen gray whales who hang out each spring for long periods of time feeding on ghost shrimp — what we call ‘residents’— but from the sound of things, we should be getting a lot of migratory whales in here, too. And maybe some hungry orcas following them in,” he said in a news release.
He added that researchers in California are reporting bigger than usual numbers of gray whales in this year’s migration.
Watch the whales
Island Adventures: Boards at 10:30 a.m. from the Everett Marina near Anthony’s Homeport Restaurant, 1726 W. Marine View Drive.
First trip is Saturday. The boat leaves at 11 a.m. Trips will continue through May 18. In addition to whales, customers frequently see harbor seals, sea lions, porpoises, eagles and osprey.
Tickets are $69 for adults; $59 for seniors 65 and older, military, groups of 10 or more, students with ID and AAA discounts; $49 for kids 3 to 12; children 2 and under are free.
Scallops go well with loads of chili and an after-dinner dose of antacid. It’s just too bad we can’t share our post-gluttony medicine with the oceans that produce our mollusk feasts.
A scallops producer on Vancouver Island in British Columbia just lost three years’ worth of product to high acidity levels. The disaster, which cost the company $10 million and could lead to its closure, is the latest vicious reminder of the submarine impacts of our fossil fuel–heavy energy appetites. As carbon dioxide is soaked up by the oceans, it reacts with water to produce bicarbonate and carbonic acid, increasing ocean acidity.
“I’m not sure we are going to stay alive and I’m not sure the oyster industry is going to stay alive,” [Island Scallops CEO Rob] Saunders told The NEWS. “It’s that dramatic.”
Saunders said the carbon dioxide levels have increased dramatically in the waters of the Georgia Strait, forcing the PH levels to 7.3 from their norm of 8.1 or 8.2. … Saunders said the company has lost all the scallops put in the ocean in 2010, 2011 and 2012.
“(The high acidity level means the scallops) can’t make their shells and they are less robust and they are suseptible to infection,” said Saunders, who also said this level of PH in the water is not something he’s seen in his 35 years of shellfish farming.
The deep and nutrient-rich waters off the Pacific Northwest are among those that are especially vulnerable to ocean acidification, and oyster farms in the region have already lost billions of their mollusks since 2005, threatening the entire industry.
So get your shellfish gluttony on now. Our acid reflux is only going to get worse as rising acidity claims more victims.
MUKILTEO — It’s an iconic summertime image in the Northwest: children playing on the shoreline at low tide, shoveling sand into plastic pails while purple and orange sea stars cling to exposed rocks nearby.
On some beaches this summer, that scene likely will be missing the sea stars.
A mysterious condition is killing sea stars — commonly known as starfish — by the thousands all along the Pacific Coast of North America, from Alaska to Baja California.
The ochre sea star, the colorful type often seen clinging to those rocks, is one of the hardest-hit species, said Drew Harvell, a Cornell University biology professor working on the problem for the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories.
Sea stars, she said, “are emblematic; people have them on their T-shirts, for heaven’s sake.”
Local populations in the inland waters of Western Washington — including in Mukilteo and Edmonds — have been nearly wiped out just in the past few months, researchers and divers say.
The stars are turning to jelly and disintegrating. A group of researchers is working to find out why.
“It’s extremely difficult to pinpoint the exact cause,” said Ben Miner, an associate professor of biology at Western Washington University in Bellingham.
He recently collected samples of sick and dead sea stars in Mukilteo and Edmonds.
The prevailing theory so far, Harvell said, is that the deaths are being caused by a pathogen, bacteria or a virus, as opposed to a broader environmental condition such as ocean acidification.
Other types of organisms are not experiencing similar death rates, she said. The scourge has been more pronounced in inland waters than on the outer coast.
Populations in Oregon, compared to those in Washington and California, have mostly been spared.
Some inland waters have been hit hard by the die-off, while other areas, such as the harbors at Langley and Coupeville on Whidbey Island, still have healthy populations, Miner said.
Sea stars that live in ultraviolet-light-filtered water in aquariums are mostly healthy, while those that live in unfiltered water are more often showing signs of disease, Miner said.
While the evidence so far points to a pathogen, “that certainly doesn’t preclude the possibility that there are other things in the water that are weakening their immune systems and allowing them to get sick,” Miner said. “It has the potential to be a combination.”
If it is bacteria or a virus, it’s uncertain whether humans are contributing to the problem, Harvell said.
“Once we know what it is, we’ll have a much better idea of what the answer to that is,” she said.
Another theory is that the condition is caused by radiation that has drifted across the ocean from the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan, which suffered a meltdown after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
If that were true, many more creatures would be affected, researchers said.
“It’s unlikely to be the direct cause,” Miner said.
There are several hundred species of sea stars worldwide and about 25 in the Pacific Northwest, he said.
“About half of those species appear susceptible,” Miner said.
Large “sunflower” stars, which have up to 20 arms and can be more than 3 feet across, have taken the brunt of the plague along with the ochre stars, Harvell said.
Kimber Chard, of Edmonds, a scuba diver who frequents the waters of Edmonds and Mukilteo, said he began noticing dying sea stars about nine months ago.
“The sunflower stars used to be everywhere,” Chard said. He used to see up to 30 of them per dive. Now it’s down to two or three.
“There used to be so many of them, and they’re just so few.”
Sea stars are echinoderms, in the same phylum as sea urchins, sand dollars and sea cucumbers. Sea stars are voracious eaters, sucking down clams, mussels, barnacles, snails, other echinoderms and even each other, researchers said. As a result, their losses could send big shock waves through the food chain.
Scientists at universities along the West Coast and at Cornell in Ithaca, N.Y., have teamed with aquariums and divers to work on the problem.
Miner is placing healthy sea stars in tanks with sickly ones to test the contagiousness of the condition. Samples of sick stars are being tested at a marine lab on Marrowstone Island near Port Townsend. Some are frozen, preserved and sent to Cornell researcher Ian Hewson.
“He has the capability to test for bacteria and viruses and he’s worked incredibly hard all fall,” Harvell said.
Miner said he hopes to have some study results to report within a couple of months.
“We’re just watching which way it goes and how fast it goes,” he said.
A Google Earth image of the Paramount Petroleum asphalt plant, recently sold to a an investment firm and leased to Arc Logistics Partners LP for use as a crude oil terminal. credit: Google Earth
PORTLAND — A national fuel storage company has plans to turn an asphalt plant near the Willamette River into a rail and marine terminal for crude oil.
The former Paramount Petroleum plant in Northwest Portland has become part of Arc Logistics Partners LP, which operates four crude oil plants in Alabama and methanol, ethanol and other fuel plants throughout the East Coast and Midwestern United States. Arc Logistics entered into a lease in January with CorEnergy, an infrastructure investment company that purchased the plant for $40 million, according to the company’s financial reports.
The Arc Logistics website lists the Portland site among its terminals and describes it as “capable of receiving, storing, and delivering heavy and light petroleum products,” by both rail lines and marine vessels.
The project is the latest of several potential crude oil terminals in the Pacific Northwest, a region receiving unprecedented amounts of oil by rail shipments because of a surge North American oil production. Currently, Port Westward on the Columbia River near Clatskanie is the only crude oil terminal in Oregon. In Washington, terminals have been proposed in Grays Harbor, Vancouver and Tacoma, and expansions to accommodate more Bakken crude shipments have been proposed at refineries in Anacortes and near Bellingham.
Arc Logistics, funded by the investment group Lightfoot Capital, became a public company in November. It describes itself as “principally engaged in the terminalling, storage, throughput and transloading of crude oil and petroleum products,” listing production of both U.S. and Canadian crude as factors affecting its business.
The Portland site spans 39 acres and has 84 tanks for a total capacity of 46 million gallons — nearly six times that of Port Westward. At one time, the plant also had a refining operation of nearly 380,000 gallons. That portion of the plant ceased operation in 2006.
Arc Logistics did not return calls for comment. In a release on the company’s website, CEO Vince Cubbage called the portland terminal an important addition to the company’s asset base, supported by a long-term contract with a major oil company: “We expect the Portland Terminal to provide the opportunity for significant incremental growth as additional customers or terminal capabilities are developed,” he said.
The shipment of crude oil through the Northwest has raised concerns over safety and environmental health from environmental groups, state agencies and emergency responders. A dramatic increase in the shipment of oil by rail has included a string of fiery derailments, and federal data show more oil spilled from rail lines in 2013 than in the previous 40 years combined.
“It’s a big threat to our communities and to water quality,” Brett VandenHeuvel, executive director of the Columbia Riverkeeper, said. “We’ve seen that these trains carrying Bakken crude have regularly been exploding. A federal safety board said that this Bakken crude should route around urban areas and the thought of putting one in the heart of Portland is a big problem.”
Another environmental consideration raised in the company’s financial report is the Portland Harbor, designated as an Environmental Protection Agency superfund site in 2002 to cleanup uncontrolled hazardous waste. The boundaries of the superfund site are not yet finalized, but if they were to include the facility, its new owner would become a responsible party.
Matt McClincy, the state’s project manager for the Portland Harbor cleanup, said the EPA occasionally includes upland facilities that do not sit directly on the river, but that state evaluations haven’t indicated it will be included.
“The hope would be that short of unforeseen accidents they wouldn’t be a concern for the river,” McClincy said.
Arc Terminals, the operating subsidiary of Arc Logistics, runs 17 facilities throughout the country. Federal data show one third of those facilities have been found out of compliance with EPA regulations in the past three years, ranging from minor violations to a $101,500 fine in Alabama in 2012. Arc Terminals facilities have been involved in only a handful of small spills, none larger than 200 gallons, according to National Response Center reports.
Scott Smith, spill contingency planner for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, said the agency typically doesn’t judge a facility based on its company’s performance in other states. The individual plant’s past performance, even under a different owner, is much more telling.
The facility opened in 1947, and since then “numerous releases have occurred, resulting in localized impacts to soil and groundwater at the site by petroleum hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds (“ VOCs ”), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (“ PAHs ”), and metals,” according to the Arc Logistics report. One of the plant’s largest spills was in 2011, when corrosion caused a spill of nearly 16,000 gallons of Naphtha, a liquid hydrocarbon that petroleum plants use as a solvent and diluent. Paramount Petroleum, which has owned the facility since 2005, had it in limited operation at the time of the purchase, according to DEQ.
“‘It looks like a fixer-upper to me,” Smith said of the plant. “A lot of those terminals are very old, and this is one of them. I’ll be looking forward to any infrastructure investment that Arc makes in it.”
The lease agreement between Arc Logistics and CorEnergy includes $10 million worth of additional investments to clean, inspect and upgrade the facility’s storage and to enhance the terminal’s infrastructure.
