The proposal to build the West Coast’s largest coal export terminal about 40 miles down the Columbia River from Portland has hit another hurdle, but the project developer, at it since 2010, says it isn’t giving up.
On Friday, Millennium Bulk Terminals-Longview lost before Washington’s Shoreline Hearings Board, which issued a summary judgment backing a Cowlitz County hearing examiner’s November denial of two key permits.
The hearing examiner’s denial was based largely on an environmental impact statement put together under county and state leadership that outlined harm the project could cause to air and water quality, among other adverse impacts.
Washington’s Department of Ecology had cited that same environmental impact statement in denying a Clean Water Act certification to Millennium in September, finding nine impacts that could not be mitigated.
Millennium said in its appeal that, among other problems, the examiner erred in using the assessment of the entire project to decide the fate of permits that were for just the first of two phases. (The first phase would give the project a capacity of 25 million metric tons annually, rising to 44 million tons in a second phase.)
Five of six of the shoreline board's members backed the permit denials, however.
“Millennium would cause a host of harms to our air, water, fish, and health, and the Shorelines Hearings Board upheld the decision that these impacts were simply too great under Washington and Cowlitz County laws,” Kristen Boyles, an Earthjustice attorney representing the conservation groups, said in a statement after the ruling. “With yet another defeat, Millennium should fold its cards and leave the table.”
Not happening, Millennium said. The project's PR firm passed on this statement from President and CEO Bill Chapman:
It is a sad state of affairs the board refused to even hold a hearing with so many mistakes made by the hearing examiner.
Our coal export terminal meets the standards required by the Cowlitz County Shoreline Master Program. That is the criteria for which to base our shoreline permit, but it was not used by the hearing examiner.
We expect to file a timely appeal and receive a fair hearing under the rule of law.
Millennium is fighting on several legal fronts.
Last January, the state's Department of Natural Resources Washington State refused to allow Northwest Alloys, an Alcoa subsidiary, to sublease aquatic lands adjacent to the proposed terminal to Millennium.
In October, however, Cowlitz County Superior Court Judge Stephen Warning said that decision was unfair and, while he didn't grant the lease, ordered the department to reconsider it.
Millennium's appeal of the Department of Ecology water quality certification decision is bound for a hearing this coming September before the state Pollution Control Hearings Board, although the project is fighting to have the case heard by the Cowlitz County Superior Court.
The Longview project is the only project still fighting among six coal terminals once proposed for Oregon and Washington. At full capacity, the $680 million terminal would take coal from eight 125-car trains every day and load it onto cargo ships — 70 per month — headed to Pacific markets.
The Portland Business Journal is a KGW News partner.
