Northwest labor press., May 17, 2013, Page 9, Image 9

Kinder Morgan scraps
plans for coal export
plant at Port Westward
ST. HELENS — Kinder Morgan
officials informed the Port of St. He-
lens and Columbia County commis-
sioners May 8 that it is scrapping plans
to build a coal storage and export facil-
ity at Port Westward Industrial Park.
Port Westward is located at the Port of
St. Helens, about 60 miles northwest
of Portland near Clatskanie, along the
Columbia River.
“We made a determination this
week that it’s not going to work and
we’re not going to pursue the project,”
said Kinder Morgan Public Affairs Di-
rector Allen Fore during the commis-
sioners’ May 8 meeting.
The Houston, Texas-based com-
pany had signed a memorandum of un-
derstanding in May 2012 with the Co-
lumbia Pacific Building Trades
Council to build the $200 million state-
of-the-art facility under a project labor
agreement. Officials said the project
would have created 150 construction
jobs over an 18- to 30-month period.
Once completed, the facility was
expected to employ 80 full-time work-
ers, including members of the Interna-
tional Longshore and Warehouse
Union to load ships.
Kinder Morgan’s plan was to trans-
port coal by railcar from the Powder
River Basin in Wyoming and Montana
to Port Westward, where it would be
loaded onto ships bound for Asia.
Environmental groups strongly op-
posed the project as soon as it was an-
MAY 17, 2013
nounced.
However, the real turning point
came last year when Portland General
Electric rejected Kimber Morgan’s ini-
tial terminal location, saying coal dust
could potentially impact two natural
gas plants it operates there. PGE has
lease control of about 850 acres at the
industrial park. Kinder Morgan had
signed an option with the Port of St.
Helens to lease about 100 acres of land.
PGE’s concerns forced Kinder
Morgan to find another location within
the industrial park.
“After months (and) many months
of this analysis ... we determined we
could not find a site on this footprint
that we could construct,” Fore told the
Longview Daily News.
Fore said that while the company is
disappointed the project did not work
out, it is not ruling out the possibility
of working with the Port of St. Helens
on a future project.
John Mohlis, executive secretary of
the Oregon State Building and Con-
struction Trades Council, was disap-
pointed with the news.
“We’re disappointed any time a
project that could put our unemployed
members back to work is taken off the
table,” he said. “There is still one coal
export proposal in Oregon we hope
moves forward. Otherwise, the coal
will be shipped out of other states and
ports, and they’ll get the jobs, and we
won’t.”
ILWU President
Robert McEllrath
(center, with
moustache) leads a
march through
downtown Van-
couver following the
Feb. 27 lockout of
longshore workers at
United Grain. A year
ago, unionized
construction workers
picketed the com-
pany at the Port of
Vancouver when it
hired an out-of-state
contractor a foreign
workers to build new
grain silos.
A year ago, it was building trades
unions picketing at United Grain
VANCOUVER — Mitsui-United
Grain at the Port of Vancouver was the
site of a labor dispute a year ago, only
that time with building trades unions.
Unemployed construction workers
picketed the Port last spring after
United Grain hired an out-of-state gen-
eral contractor who used a nonunion
foreign workforce on its $80 million
export terminal expansion. A Portland
television station reported that of 240
workers brought in to pour concrete at
the grain terminal, 60 percent were
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
from another country. At the time, un-
employment in the construction indus-
try in Southwest Washington and Port-
land hovered at 30 percent.
United Grain, founded in Portland
in 1969, became a subsidiary of the
Japanese conglomerate Mitsui in 1997.
It enjoys a long-term lease from the
Port of Vancouver. The Port itself was
created by Clark County taxpayers in
1912. It is a tax-supported public
agency with a mission of economic de-
velopment.
As the Labor Press reported in the
March 16, 2012, edition:
“The project benefits from several
kinds of public assistance:
“A tax break. In Washington, busi-
nesses pay a 6.5 percent sales tax when
they build a new facility. But develop-
ers of large warehouses and grain ele-
vators get a pass: They pay the tax,
then fill out an application to have it re-
bated in full.
“Rail improvements. The Port of
Vancouver is half-way through its 10-
year $150 million West Vancouver
Freight Access project. One compo-
nent of the project — estimated at $8
million — is a set of track improve-
ments to serve the United Grain termi-
nal. The improvements will double the
number of rail cars that can be un-
loaded at one time, from 11 cars to 22.
Under its lease agreement with the Port
of Vancouver, United Grain will pay
$10 each for the first 30,000 rail cars a
year (or $300,000 a year) toward that
cost.
“Channel deepening. The publicly
funded 20-year effort to deepen the
Columbia River shipping channel —
from 40 to 43 feet — means that ap-
proximately 7,200 tons of additional
grain can be loaded onto each vessel
calling at the Port of Vancouver.”
The general contractor, Younglove
Construction LLC of Sioux City, Iowa
— turned up in a 2006 Wall Street
Journal article about how the use of
immigrant workers from Mexico is
driving down U.S. wages in construc-
tion. In the article, Younglove is men-
tioned as one of several Midwest silo
construction companies using re-
cruiters on the U.S.-Mexico border.
At the Port of Vancouver, union of-
ficials determined that general laborers
on the job were paid $12 an hour, far
below the prevailing wage of $28.51 an
hour.
Now, a year later, Mitsui-United
Grain has locked out its union work-
force and replaced them with nonunion
out-of-state workers.
...ILWU
lockout
(From Page 1)
that a “$275 million West Vancouver
Freight Access rail project allows
Japan’s Mitsui to export grain ship-
ments for record profits” and the “$178
million Columbia River channel deep-
ening project moves Mitsui’s massive
grain ships in and out of United Grain.”
Mitsui & Co. Inc. reported profits
of $6.08 billion in 2012.
“It’s difficult for all of us to see our
local jobs taken away and handed to
workers Mitsui imported from Florida
and Wisconsin,” said Cager Clabaugh,
president of ILWU Local 4 and a third-
generation longshoreman, who re-
called how as a kid he would go to the
grain terminal to watch his grandfather
load grain. “We pay local taxes and
spend locally, but the replacement
workers take their money out-of-state.”
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