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Friday, February 26, 2021
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the opinions of the authors but
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Opinion
Editor & Publisher
Managing Editor
Joe Beach
Carl Sampson
opinions@capitalpress.com | CapitalPress.com/opinion
Our View
Washington ties itself into knot over low-carbon fuels
T
he Washington Legislature has
before it a proposal to require
the use of low-carbon fuels in
cars and trucks. The fuels, mixtures
that would include more ethanol and
diesel made from cooking oil, canola
and other feedstocks, would reduce
the amount of carbon emitted into the
atmosphere.
While farm equipment would be
exempt from the low carbon fuel
requirement, the trucks that transport
the state’s crops and other agricultural
products would not.
Because low carbon mixtures cost
significantly more, trucking compa-
nies, commuters and others would soon
notice an increase in their fuel bills.
That, in turn, would be passed along to
customers such as farmers and foodser-
vice companies.
Also, ethanol has only about 70%
of the energy of gasoline, according to
the Alternative Fuels Data Center, so
The Washington Capitol
the fuel efficiency of Washington’s cars
and trucks would decrease.
In other words, Washington’s fuel
costs would go up as mileage goes
down.
The state currently requires at least
2% of all the gasoline and diesel fuel
sold in Washington to be ethanol or
biodiesel. State-owned vehicles must,
“to the extent possible,” use 100% bio-
fuels or electricity.
While canola and other feedstocks
such as used cooking oils can be made
into biodiesel, it costs more than diesel
from crude oil. Depending on the mix-
ture, that added price can range from
about 20 cents a gallon for 20% bio-
diesel to 85 cents for 100%, according
to Consumers Union.
Last year log truck drivers from
around the state descended on the Cap-
itol in Olympia to protest the proposed
biodiesel requirement. Supporters of
the Timber Unity movement told law-
makers the higher fuel prices would
turn their bottom lines red. One truck-
ing company owner told a committee
hearing that one-third of his expenses
are fuel.
Another fault in the proposal that
critics point out is that ethanol and bio-
diesel are produced out of state — even
out of country. For example, Midwest
corn and Brazilian sugar cane are made
into ethanol, which is shipped to the
state to be blended with gasoline.
There’s a reason for that.
In the past, the state bureaucracy has
prevented at least one biodiesel plant
from being built in the state.
Snake River dam proposal
is a recipe for disaster
Our View
I
Capital Press File
Washington legislators have modified a bill to allow farmworkers to sue for three years of back pay.
OT bill would ruin
Washington farmers, ranchers
bill originally designed to protect
Washington farmers from having to
pay retroactive overtime pay in the
wake of a recent state supreme court decision
has been changed in committee to require
just the opposite.
If passed as it stands, the bill would put
Washington farms and ranches on the hook for
$2 billion in back wages — all for following
the law understood for more than 60 years.
That would be ruinous to even the largest
farming operations.
The Fair Labor Standards Act, passed by
Congress in 1938, established a federal mini-
mum wage and provided for overtime pay for
work over 40 hours. The act provided a host of
job classifications, including farmworkers, that
are exempt from the overtime rule.
Washington lawmakers in 1959 adopted a
similar provision into state law.
In a case filed by two former milkers from
Yakima County, the Washington Supreme
Court struck down the exemption Nov. 5 in a
5-4 decision. Left unclear by the ruling was
whether it applied just to dairy farms or all
farmworkers, or whether those impacted could
collect three years in back wages as made pos-
sible under a separate state law.
Trial lawyers with their plaintiff farmwork-
ers waited in the wings and in short order sev-
A
eral suits were filed demanding back pay.
Ag interests sought relief from the
Legislature.
Senate Bill 5172 originally barred farm-
workers from applying the ruling retroactively.
But, Democrats on the Senate labor committee
amended and passed the bill, confirming that
the court’s ruling should be applied retroac-
tively and to all farms, not just dairies.
Under the current bill, farms would have to
find the workers and pay them back overtime,
plus 12% per year interest.
If farms can’t find a worker, the back wages
would have to be paid to Labor and Indus-
tries, which would set up a committee to pay
out back wages. Farms that don’t pay upfront
could be sued.
Whether Democrats on the committee were
serious, or jockeying for a better negotiating
position as the bill progresses, we don’t know.
As we said three weeks ago, the court’s
original ruling was wrongheaded, but allowing
newly minted victims to retroactively collect
overtime would be disastrous to farming oper-
ations that were following the law as written
by the Legislature and enforced by the state.
We can only hope that commonsense will
prevail and SB 5172 will be returned to its
original purpose — a tall order, given who
we’re talking about.
READERS’ VIEW
Costs of farming
in California out
of control
I read with interest the com-
ments made in the Guest View
by Mike McCarthy; California is
right up there with Oregon as an
extremely costly state for farming.
In 2018 our organization com-
missioned a study by CalPoly
San Luis Obispo to determine the
increase in regulatory costs to let-
tuce farmers of the Central Coast
of California. The resulting study,
“A Decade of Change: A Case
Study of Regulatory Compliance
Costs in the Produce Industry”
concluded that regulatory compli-
ance costs increased 795% in the
decade since 2008. Reviewed were
areas such as regulatory require-
ments for air quality, water quality,
pesticide use, food safety, work-
ers’ compensation, Affordable Care
Act, labor and wages, and edu-
cation and training for regulatory
compliance.
While the same study deter-
mined that the costs of crop pro-
duction only increased by 24.8% in
Last year, Phillips 66 and Renew-
able Energy Group abandoned plans
to build the largest biodiesel refinery
on the West Coast. The state Depart-
ment of Ecology and Whatcom County
officials determined the project, to
be built next to an oil refinery, would
have had significant environmen-
tal consequences. Addressing those
concerns would have made the plant
uneconomical.
The state of Washington has tied
itself into a knot. It wants “cleaner”
fuels, but refuses to permit at least one
plant that would produce them.
This is crazy-making, and shows the
paper-thin reasoning behind the state’s
efforts to reduce carbon in fuels to
“stop” climate change. The amount of
carbon dioxide Washington state pro-
duces is less than a fraction of a percent
of the world total.
But even doing that is made more
difficult because of the state’s own
environmental policies.
the same decade, the policy makers
in our state have largely ignored
the impacts and costs of regulatory
compliance as new and ever-more-
harsh requirements are laid upon
growers each year; regulators have
chosen to ignore this study on reg-
ulatory compliance costs as well.
We, too, want to keep farm-
ing, and I fear for our small farm-
ers who cannot keep pace with the
costs of regulatory compliance.
Norm Groot
Executive Director,
Monterey County Farm Bureau
Salinas, Calif.
daho Congressman Mike
Simpson floated a $33 bil-
lion “concept” a few weeks
ago to breach the four lower
Snake River dams and compen-
sate the businesses, governments
and other organizations and
individuals that rely upon their
many benefits. Rep. Simpson
says he held over 300 meetings
with stakeholders to develop his
concept.
I’m a lifelong citizen of Whit-
man County, a commercial grain
grower, a port commissioner,
and a past city council member
and planning commissioner. I’m
also on the board of directors
of a trade association that rep-
resents a large number of Snake
River users, and I am chair of a
group that represents those users
in the courtroom. Rep. Simpson
didn’t meet with me or anyone
I know.
His numbers keep changing,
but the last version of Rep. Simp-
son’s concept I saw proposed
investing $1.5 billion in roads,
rail lines and related infrastruc-
ture to transport the Washington,
Idaho, and Montana grain that
would no longer be able to travel
to market on barges.
As a former planning com-
missioner, I wish former dentist
Rep. Simpson good luck with
that. The public planning and
permitting processes for build-
ing new and upgrading existing
roads and rail lines could con-
sume decades before the first
ground is ever broken — if it’s
broken at all.
I say “if at all” because
whether it goes by road, rail or
river, our grain is transported
along the Snake and Colum-
bia river corridors to deep draft
ports on the lower Columbia for
export overseas. The same envi-
ronmental groups who are push-
ing Rep. Simpson to push this
plan on us will also be at the
head of the line to sue against
further transportation infrastruc-
ture in the scenic and environ-
mentally sensitive Columbia
River Gorge and other ecologi-
cally important areas.
Even if the railroad compa-
nies can overcome the environ-
mentalists in court, will they and
the many other private compa-
nies involved in grain storage
and transportation even want to
build, maintain and operate all
this new infrastructure in the first
place? The rail companies that
serve our region have repeatedly
said that short line services don’t
pencil out for them profit-wise,
except by charging their custom-
ers exorbitant prices.
How exorbitant? My litiga-
tion group commissioned a study
that suggest transportation costs
for most grain growers would
increase 50-100% if barging was
removed as a shipping option.
With most family farms oper-
ating at the bare edge of profit-
ability as it is, that kind of cost
increase might put as many as
1,100 out of business. I’m proud
of my county and region, but the
GUEST
VIEW
Tom
Kammerzell
simple fact is nearly one in five
residents here lives at or below
the poverty line. We can’t afford
to lose the kinds of living wage
jobs that farms and the busi-
nesses that serve them create.
Even if farmers could some-
how afford the cost of switch-
ing from rivers to roads and rail,
I have serious doubts our envi-
ronment can. In that same study
I mentioned above, researchers
concluded that losing barging
as a transportation option will
increase carbon emissions by
over 1.25 million tons each year.
That’s like adding a new coal
plant worth of emissions every
5-6 years.
Even more recent research
has revealed that mass die-offs
of coho salmon in the Pacific
Northwest and elsewhere along
the West Coast can be tied to
a chemical antioxidant used
in tires. Barging on the Snake
and Columbia rivers kept over
330,000 trucks — and the toxic
by-products from their nearly
6 million tires — off Pacific
Northwest roads and out of the
waterways in 2018 alone.
All those extra trucks on the
road and trains on the rails harm
more than fish. People get killed,
too. There are 23 rail and 155
truck fatalities annually for every
one related to barging, along
with 125 rail and 2,172 trucking
related injuries per each barging
injury.
All of these impacts I’ve
described are just related to tak-
ing barges off the river. Rep.
Simpson’s proposal creates so
many other impacts to so many
other sectors that it almost
makes my head spin trying to
think about them.
I suspect the $33 billion Rep.
Simpson is offering all of us
as compensation for all these
impacts barely qualifies as a
good start. But I’d still try to take
his concept seriously, except
for this: Even Simpson himself
admits he has no idea if his con-
cept will actually speed salmon
recovery. In farming terms, that
would be like tilling and fertil-
izing the fields and putting in
a crop that you know nothing
about or where to sell it and hop-
ing for the best. Looks to me like
a recipe for disaster.
Tom Kammerzell and his wife
own farms in Whitman County,
Wash., and Benewah County,
Idaho, which produce wheat that
is shipped on the Snake-Colum-
bia river system. He is also a
Port of Whitman County com-
missioner and chair of the
Pacific Northwest Waterways
Association, Inland Ports and
Navigation Group, which rep-
resents navigational interests in
the courtroom.