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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 16, 2015)
2C THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JANUARY 16, 2015 ODFW donates 175 tons of salmon to Oregon’s food banks CLACKAMAS – Banner runs of Pa- Oregonians in 2014. Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife hatcheries donated more than 350,000 pounds of chinook and coho salmon to food banks in communities across the state. The huge donation of high quality protein was made possible by one of years. A record 1.2 million chinook and 1 million coho returned to the Columbia River in 2014. Similar returns are ex- pected again this year. “The unprecedented returns salmon to our region the past two years have helped feed thousands of people who might otherwise have gone hungry,” said Chris Kern, deputy administrator of The vast majority of salmon donat- ed to Oregon’s food banks are collected after ODFW hatcheries gather enough eggs to produce the following year’s crop of juvenile salmon. Once the young salmon are reared at the hatcheries and then released, a small percentage of them will return to the hatcheries as adults after spending three or four years maturing in the ocean. “We’re proud that our hatcheries have such positive impact on the lives of Oregonians,” said Manny Farinas, ODFW West Region hatchery coordi- nator. “Thanks to all of our great vol- unteers that helped collect, process, and deliver the fish to the various food banks.” If forecasts materialize as hoped, 2015 could be another outstanding year for salmon returns. Preliminary data - agers from Oregon and Washington sug- gests chinook returns will be even larger than 2014 while coho returns could be mixed. “All the indicators are pointing to another good year of salmon returns,” Kern said. Charles Baker, a hatchery tecnician at ODFW’s Sandy hatchery, puts a coho salmon into an ice-filled tote destined for the Oregon Food Bank. RICK SWART— Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Neighbors hope to derail Vancouver oil terminal By CONRAD WILSON Oregon Public Broadcasting VANCOUVER, Wash. — Linda Garcia drives along the streets of the Fruit Valley neighborhood in Vancou- ver, Wash. For almost the last 20 years, it’s the place she’s called home. “My neighborhood is my family,” she said. But she’s concerned about how this working-class, “transitional neighbor- hood” — those are her words — could change for the worse if the Vancouver Energy Project builds the nation’s larg- est oil-by-rail terminal at the Port of Vancouver along the banks of the Co- lumbia River. If completed, the Vancouver Energy Project could ship 360,000 barrels of oil daily from the Port of Vancouver to re- Many of the homes in the neighbor- hood, along with an elementary school, are less than a mile from where as many as four trains full with crude oil would unload at the Port every day. “If there were any type of incident, explosion, over-release of chemicals, spill, earthquake, anything that will cause a safety issue, we’re not entirely convinced that our neighborhood will be safe from that,” Garcia said. August 2014 by the Vancouver Energy Project with the state, show the pro- posed terminal would emit chemicals known to cause cancer. However, ac- cording to the documents, those emis- sions would be in line with the state’s air pollution regulations. Garcia said the community has long had a positive relationship with compa- nies at the Port. And for the most part, she said, the neighborhood has em- braced industry as part of daily life. The small, uniform houses in Fruit Valley are evidence of that relationship. Many were built during the early 1940s to house employees who worked at the Kaiser Shipyards during World War II. Despite that history with industry, Garcia said last year, the Fruit Valley Neighborhood Associate voted to op- pose the oil terminal. “So many companies have come into the Port and have come to our neighborhood association and have talked to us and have told us their plans,” she said. “And if we have any concerns, every single one of those con- cerns has been addressed.” Garcia said that while the project’s backers did come to a neighborhood meeting, residents are still worried about safety. Not far from Fruit Valley, Barry Cain, president of Gramor Develop- ment, is showing off plans for the city of Vancouver’s new blockbuster devel- opment. Sitting behind a desk in the spacious lobby of city hall, Cain whips out his iPad to show off a rendering of a mas- sive 32 acre, $1.5 billion mixed-use project right on the Columbia River. “We’ve got a half-mile long park and we’ll have great restaurants. There’ll be 10 or 15 restaurants before it’s done, right along the water,” he said. “It’ll be just a beautiful environment. Vancouver Energy Project In this rendering, the shaded blue buildings show what the Vancouver Energy Project would look like if it’s built at the Port of Vancouver. much about oil trains in the state. The poll surveyed 1,200 residents across the Northwest — 400 each in Oregon, Washington and Idaho from June 25 to 30. The margin of error for each state’s results was 4.9 percent. The three-state regional results had a margin of error of 2.8 percent. Larrabee said safety will be integral to the oil terminal. “This is a facility designed from - eration,” he said. “What that means is we can design all of the state-of-the-art safety features in right from the get-go.” Despite falling oil prices, Larrabee said the project remains viable because there’s still a demand for oil at West CONRAD WILSON — OPB The dock at the Port of Vancouver where crude oil would move from tanks to ships. According to the Van- couver Energy Project, the oil would be moved by ship to refineries along the West Coast. Obviously it will set the stage for the future of Vancouver.” While the project’s not far from Fruit Valley, if the sleek design is any indication, the two neighborhoods are worlds apart. Still, like many of the residents of Fruit Valley, Cain doesn’t want to see the oil terminal built. The 21-block development is sand- wiched between the Columbia River and the very railroad tracks that would carry crude oil to the Port. Already, trains carrying oil pass along the tracks said he doesn’t want to see more. But Jared Larrabee, general man- ager for the Vancouver Energy Project, couldn’t disagree more. said. Larrabee said the proposed oil ter- minal will create 320 construction jobs and an estimated 176 additional jobs once it’s up and running. “It would have the ability to handle 360,000 barrels a day, which would be about four trains a day that we could handle at the facility. And to bring those in, unload the trains, put the crude oil into tanks and from there put it onto ships to Larrabee said despite the opposition from neighbors, several polls show sup- port for shipping oil by rail. A poll conducted by EarthFix in June found a little more than half of Washing- ton state residents support shipping oil by rail. But the poll also found the ma- jority interviewed hadn’t read or heard Dr. Joel Kaufman, who researches environmental health at the Universi- ty of Washington’s School of Public Health, said when it comes to the day- to-day operations; it’s possible to keep those who work and live nearby rela- tively safe. But, he adds, things some- times don’t go according to plan. “They have upset conditions, they have times when they’re doing main- tenance and something fails, or there’s times when safety equipment doesn’t work the way it supposed to,” Kaufman said. “It’s the times when these are running not the way they’re supposed to that I worry most about, including a catastrophic event.” The oil terminal is under review by the state’s energy siting council. Ultimately, the council will make a recommendation to Gov. Jay Inslee who will decide whether the project moves forward. f o t s Be Read about the Readersʼ Choice Voted by YOU! W inners January 29th, 2015 w w w .coa stw eek en d .com