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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.
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January 29th, 2015
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