5A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN MONDAY, MARCH 7, 2016
LNG: Appeal of terminal decision would be dif¿cult
Continued from Page 1A
River-based
environmental
group opposing the LNG proj-
ect. “It wasn’t just a techni-
cal or procedural problem. He
found that impacts to salmon
were too great, agreed with
the state that Oregon LNG
could block commercial crab-
bing and other ¿shing boats as
well as recreational boats on a
pretty regular basis, and all of
that violates the public trust
rights of the people of Warren-
ton and throughout our state.”
In addition to a loading ter-
minal for tankers and a pipeline
that would link to an existing
natural gas pipeline in Wash-
ington state, the project design
includes a facility to liquefy
the natural gas and two storage
tanks.
“The terminal is certainly
the important part of this,” Van-
denHeuvel said, adding that the
project “can’t proceed without
the terminal.”
Appeal process
With the arrival of Kearns’
decisions, a two-week appeal
period began.
The parties and any person
who submitted written and oral
testimony can ¿le an appeal
with Urling.
If Kearns’ decision is
appealed, the Warrenton City
Commission may hold a pub-
lic hearing on it in the near
future.
Kujala said that the com-
mission can expect an appeal
from Oregon LNG and, per-
haps, opponents dissatis¿ed
with the pipeline decision.
“For that reason, it’s imper-
ative that the City Commission
remain objective and unbiased
because we will be tasked with
hearing any appeal that comes
on the land use matter.”
If the commission’s deci-
sion is then appealed, the case
will come before the state Land
Use Board of Appeals.
More recently, a federal mag-
istrate judge ruled against Ore-
gon LNG in a property dispute
with the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, which holds a nearly
60-year-old easement with the
city of Warrenton to deposit
dredge spoils on the land where
the company intends to build.
The company is also await-
ing the ¿nal Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission’s envi-
ronmental review, scheduled for
release in June. The draft review
states that the project would
result in adverse environmental
impacts, but that these would be
reduced to less-than-signi¿cant
levels though minimization and
mitigation measures Oregon
LNG has proposed.
Back in September
At the two-part hearing in
September, Mike Connors, the
Portland attorney representing
the energy company, argued that
the city designated the land for
marine industrial development
a decade ago, making way for
Oregon LNG-type proposals.
Oregon LNG’s support-
ers cited the need for well-paid
employment opportunities in
the county. The company has
claimed that the terminal and
pipeline construction phase
would create thousands of new
jobs and more than 100 perma-
nent jobs, while boosting Clat-
sop County’s annual tax reve-
nues by more than $90 million.
But Lauren Goldberg, a staff
attorney for Columbia River-
keeper, countered that the city’s
Challenges to an appeal
The Daily Astorian
Daniel Kearns, a Portland land use attorney, speaks during an Oregon LNG permit public
hearing at the Warrenton Community Center in September.
move to rezone the land doesn’t
predetermine that a project of
that scale is appropriate.
Additional
opponents
argued that the scenic North
Coast environment is not an
acceptable home for the project,
or that the Cascadia Subduction
Zone — where an earthquake
and tsunami may one day level
and scour the seafront — is not
a logical setting for a fossil fuel
hub. They also worry the proj-
ect will increase traf¿c conges-
tion, decrease property values
and endanger tourism.
Roadblocks
The Warrenton decision —
which Dan Serres, conserva-
tion director at Columbia Riv-
erkeeper, called a “very good
decision, super clean-cut” —
represents the latest setback
for the company, a subsidiary
of Leucadia National Corp.,
a New York-based holding
company.
For example, Oregon LNG
can’t submit a complete state
land use application to the
Department of State Lands
until the company can prove
the project’s compatibility
with Clatsop County’s land use
rules. Last year, the state Land
Use Board of Appeals upheld
the county’s 201 decision to
deny a permit for 41 miles of
pipeline that would connect to
the export terminal along the
peninsula.
Though Oregon LNG has
the right to appeal Kearns’
denial of the terminal, that por-
tion of the project will be dif¿-
cult to appeal, given its poten-
tial to signi¿cantly impact the
estuary, VandenHeuvel said.
“This wasn’t that Oregon
LNG forgot to dot the i’s and
cross the t’s. This was a thor-
ough analysis on the impacts on
¿shing in the estuary, on public
access, and found that the proj-
ect doesn’t meet Warrenton’s
land use laws,” VandenHeuvel
said, “and we think that there’s
nothing that’s going to change
that.”
Terminal: It would create a 109-acre dredge footprint
Continued from Page 1A
These are the conclusions
reached by Portland-based land
use attorney Daniel Kearns,
who denied the company’s
applications for the bidirec-
tional terminal on behalf of the
city of Warrenton last week.
Though he approved the
company’s separate applica-
tions for a 2-mile stretch of
LNG pipeline, Kearns’ deci-
sion details why Oregon LNG’s
plans to build a terminal appear
to run afoul of the city’s devel-
opment code.
Fishing
The attorney found that Ore-
gon LNG “has not adequately
characteri]ed and quanti¿ed the
impact of its operations on com-
mercial and recreational ¿sh-
ing, nor has it demonstrated
that these impacts will not be
unreasonable.”
Oregon LNG has acknowl-
edged a “500-yard exclusion
zone for LNG vessels while in
transit, a 200-yard exclusion
zone for LNG vessels moored
at dock, and a 50-yard exclu-
sion zone from the dock facil-
ities with no vessels present,”
Kearns’ decision states.
“The applicant also dis-
cusses possible impacts to pop-
ular %uoy 0 ¿shing and offers
vaguely to minimize impacts
by ‘restrict(ing) LNG marine
carrier arrivals and departures
to nighttime periods or when
the number of ¿shermen has
decreased during the Buoy 10
¿shing season,’” he continues,
quoting Oregon LNG’s hearing
submissions.
Pointing out that the Youngs
Bay Control Zone already
restricts recreational ¿shing
access, the company has argued
that its own exclusion zones
won’t further impact recre-
ational ¿shing in the area.
However, the Youngs Bay
Control Zone “only restricts
angling for a portion of the
year, while the proposed secu-
rity zones are effective the entire
year,” the Oregon Department
of Fish and Wildlife said in a
statement.
“The existing restricted
¿shing areas and periods are
intended to help endangered
and diminished ¿sh populations
recover to the point that ¿sh-
ing can again expand,” Kearns
wrote.
He added, based on com-
ments from the state Depart-
ment of Fish and Wildlife, that
“the agency either believes that
the LNG terminal operation will
work against those recovery
efforts by causing unacceptable
habitat impacts, or that the appli-
cant has not provided enough
detailed information for ODFW
to determine that it won’t have
that adverse effect.”
In addition, “recreational
vessels will be periodically pro-
hibited (about 250 times each
year) from movement in and out
of the Skipanon River during the
times that the LNG marine carri-
ers travel between the berth and
the federal navigation channel,”
the department wrote. “These
safety closures will permanently
prohibit recreational ¿shing and
crabbing from a 100 acre area
at the marine terminal, and will
prohibit transit through the turn-
ing basin area over a period of
about 125 hours each year.”
Kearns concluded that Ore-
gon LNG’s mitigating measures
are “not suf¿cient to prevent
unacceptable losses, irrevers-
ible damage, unacceptable deg-
radation or reduction in estu-
ary resources from this project,
all of which affects public trust
rights.”
Fish
As designed, the termi-
nal would create a 109-acre
dredge footprint in the estuary
and require ¿lling in roughly 5
acres of wetland.
The state Department of
Fish and Wildlife has writ-
ten that the terminal could,
among other concerns, “poten-
tially impact salmonid rearing
and migration habitat, lamprey
migration habitat, eulachon
rearing, spawning and migra-
tion habitat, and green stur-
geon feeding habitat” within
the estuary.
0eanwhile, the 5-acre
wetland habitat is “critical
for rearing habitat for several
(Environmental Species Act-
listed) salmonids and is also
used by a variety of other estu-
arine-dependent species,” the
department wrote.
For the wetland area, the
Fish and Wildlife Department
recommended that the project
result in zero net loss of wet-
land habitat quantity or quality,
that Oregon LNG avoid impact-
ing the area altogether by ¿nd-
ing another development action
or that the company ¿nd some
way to mitigate the impact.
However, Oregon LNG’s
wetland mitigation plan is
“unproven and unveri¿ed
from a biological or ecological
perspective.”
Oregon LNG has also
claimed that “the mere pres-
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ence of ESA-listed ¿sh in the
vicinity of the proposed proj-
ect does not necessarily imply
negative impact” — a state-
ment that Kearns wrote “de¿es
logic.”
He said that a permanent
wetland impact of 5 acres
is a “signi¿cant loss of habi-
tat in the context of the Lower
Columbia River Estuary, which
has seen big wetland losses
since pre-settlement times.”
Kearns said he cannot credit
the applicant’s attempts to min-
imize the impacts of the dredge
footprint or the impact on the
wetland, “which state and fed-
eral environmental agencies
regarded as signi¿cant.”
Although it is theoretically
possible the company could
meet the criteria for Warren-
ton’s development code by sub-
mitting more or different evi-
dence, “that seems unlikely
based on the fundamental
nature of the project and the
estuary and shorelands that will
be impacted,” Kearns wrote.
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