By Phuong Le
The Associated Press
SEATTLE — Gov. Jay Inslee on Monday rejected a permit for what would have been the nation’s largest oil-by-rail terminal, saying the record shows the risks and impacts outweighed the need for and potential benefits of the project.
Inslee agreed with the recommendation of a state energy panel, which unanimously voted in November to recommend that the Vancouver Energy project in southwest Washington be denied.
The joint venture of Savage Companies and Andeavor, formerly known as Tesoro Corp., proposed to receive about 360,000 barrels of North American crude oil a day by trains at the port of Vancouver along the Columbia River. Oil would be loaded onto tankers and ships bound for West Coast refineries.
The decision represents a victory for environmental and local groups, tribes and cities that opposed the project, saying it posed too great a risk to communities and the environment.
Inslee told the state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council in a letter Monday that he found “ample support in the record” for the panel’s decision.
The governor, who is a Democrat, highlighted several issues that led him to his decision, including seismic risks at the site, the potential for an oil spill and the risk that a fire or explosion at the facility would harm workers and the community.
“The Council has thoroughly examined these and other issues and determined that it is not possible to adequately mitigate the risks, or eliminate or minimize the adverse impacts of the facility, to an acceptable level,” Inslee wrote.
The state energy panel concluded in its report that developers didn’t meet the burden to show that the project proposed at the port of Vancouver site would produce a net benefit in balancing the need for energy and the impact to the public.
A spokesman with Vancouver Energy said he expected to release a statement Monday.
Vancouver Energy said in November that it was extremely disappointed with the panel’s decision and noted that the board “set an impossible standard for new energy facilities based on the risk of incidents that the Final Environmental Impact Statement characterizes as extremely unlikely.”
Developers have said the terminal is needed to bring crude oil from North Dakota and other areas to a western U.S. port to meet growing fuel demands and future energy needs. They’ve argued that it could be built safely and would secure a reliable supply of energy for the state.
Project developers have 30 days to appeal the governor’s decision in state court.
The decision “showed that the health of the Columbia River and the safety of its citizens matters most,” the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission said in a statement.
“It’s a real victory for the community of Vancouver and the people of Washington,” Michael Lang, conservation director with Friends of the Columbia Gorge, said Monday. “It shows that when projects are proposed that pose a significant threat to health and public safety that we can say ‘no’.”
An environmental study released last year found that the project poses a potential risk of oil spills, train accidents and longer emergency response times due to road traffic.
Many of the risks could be decreased with certain mitigation measures, but the study outlined four areas where it said the impacts are significant and cannot be avoided. It identified those risks as train accidents, emergency response delays, negative impacts on low-income communities and the possibility that an earthquake would damage the facility’s dock and cause an oil spill.
