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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, JULY 4, 2017
Environmentalists urge Astoria to oppose oil terminal
Oil-by-train
project planned
for Vancouver
By KATIE
FRANKOWICZ
The Daily Astorian
Local and regional envi-
ronmental groups asked the
Astoria City Council Monday
night to join with other Pacific
Northwest cities to oppose an
oil terminal they say threat-
ens the health of the Columbia
River estuary.
The Tesoro Savage oil-
by-rail terminal at Washing-
ton’s Port of Vancouver, first
announced in 2013, would be
the largest oil-by-rail project
in North America. Five mile-
and-a-half long trains would
carry a daily output of 360,000
barrels of crude oil. The oil
would be put on oil tank-
ers that would then cross the
Columbia River Bar, accord-
ing to nonprofit environmental
group Columbia Riverkeeper.
The project could “dramat-
ically increase” the danger of
an oil spill on the Columbia
River from trains coming into
the terminal and the vessels
going downstream, said Dan
Serres, the group’s conserva-
tion director.
The City Council had
opposed a liquefied natu-
ral gas and pipeline project
in Warrenton in 2015, Serres
said. He spoke Monday seek-
ing a similar resolution, this
time for the oil-by-rail project.
“That statement (in 2015)
resonated statewide,” Serres
said. “… It marked this area
as being a place where people
like to help the river.”
Vancouver, Spokane, Port-
land and Hood River have
already spoken out against the
project. Washington Gov. Jay
Inslee will make the final deci-
sion on whether to approve or
deny the project, a decision he
is expected to make sometime
late this year or next year.
Of chief concern to Serres
and others opposed to the proj-
ect are the trains themselves.
“This is a new thing for
the United States,” Serres
said. “We haven’t moved oil
by train in this volume ever
Port of Vancouver
Environmentalists want the Astoria City Council to op-
pose an oil-by-train terminal at the Port of Vancouver.
before. In 2012, this started to
ramp up. In 2013 we started to
see trains derail.”
He pointed to an oil train
that derailed and caught
fire in Mosier, a town in the
Columbia River Gorge, last
year. That derailment and the
small oil spill in the river that
resulted was a “taste” of what
could happen elsewhere, he
said.
Jan Mitchell, who serves
on the Astoria Planning Com-
mission, urged the council to
join the other cities in oppos-
ing the project.
“Anything that happens to
the river upstream, happens to
us,” she said.
City councilors asked
questions and expressed con-
cern over the safety issues,
but Councilor Bruce Jones,
Astoria hires private landscaper for parks
City still
debating how
to fund parks
By KATIE
FRANKOWICZ
The Daily Astorian
With plans to further dis-
cuss how to fund parks into the
future, the Astoria City Coun-
cil approved a contract Mon-
day night with Greensmith
Landscaping to maintain key
parks often used by tourists
during the summer months.
“This is a way right now
that we’re able to keep the
level of service that’s expected
in our tourist-related facilities
and continue on this summer,”
City Manager Brett Estes said.
The
$99,216
bid
Greensmith submitted will
go to maintaining 13 parks,
including the Doughboy Mon-
ument on Marine Drive, the
Garden of Surging Waves next
to City Hall, and parks along
the Astoria Riverwalk. The
money comes from the city’s
Promote Astoria fund.
A resident pointed out that
for nearly $100,000, the city
could create a full-time posi-
tion to help the Parks and Rec-
reation Department maintain
parks.
City councilors and Estes
replied that the money will pay
for a crew of landscapers using
the company’s own equipment
and includes repeat visits to
sites. The Parks Department
currently has two employees
tasked with mowing all of the
city parks. The money for the
work by Greensmith comes
from the city’s Promote Asto-
ria fund. This money has to go
to tourist-related items, Estes
said. It could not be used to pay
for a new full-time employee
at the Parks Department.
Estes said there had been
some discussion about whether
to wait on assigning this work
— Greensmith was the only
company that responded with
a bid — until the City Coun-
cil’s next meeting when they
will discuss future ways to
fund the parks and bring on
more staff. But, Estes and city
staff concluded, the parks need
maintenance now as summer
crowds begin to show up and
the Promote Astoria money
had already been set aside for
this work.
In other business:
• The City Council also
held a second reading of the
Advance Astoria ordinance.
This plan outlines a five-year
economic strategy, in part
by looking at the clusters of
businesses that already exist
in Astoria and seeking ways
to expand them as well as
develop new businesses and
industrial sites across the city.
• The council approved
cost of living adjustments to
management and confiden-
tial employees (a 2.5 percent
adjustment); the public safety
group employees (1.5 per-
cent), fire employees (2.5 per-
cent) and part time and sea-
sonal groups, accounting for
increases to Oregon’s mini-
mum wage. The city is still
in the midst of contract nego-
tiations with public works
and general/parks employee
groups.
• Councilors approved a
liquor license application from
Turtle Rock Cellars Inc., doing
business as Swakane Winery
at 240 10th Street.
Suicide prevention bill heads to the House
By PARIS ACHEN
Capital Bureau
SALEM — The state
House will consider a bill
modeled after a law enacted
by Washington state voters in
2016 to allow loved ones and
law enforcement to obtain an
emergency order to block a
suicidal person from access to
deadly weapons.
The House Committee on
Rules voted 5-2 to recommend
passage of the bill. The Sen-
ate approved the bill 17-11 in
May.
State Sen. Brian Boquist,
R-Dallas, proposed the bill to
create extreme risk protection
orders as a way to prevent the
kind of suicides he has expe-
rienced as a father and a U.S.
Army Special Forces veteran.
Boquist’s 31-year-old son, a
U.S. Navy veteran, commit-
ted suicide Feb. 16, 2016, in
the midst of the Legislature’s
session. Boquist wrote a state-
ment read by Senate President
Peter Courtney the day after
the suicide that said his son,
Seth Sprague, had “never fully
recovered from the tragedy of
war.”
In an emotional floor
speech in May, Boquist said
that three members of his com-
THE DAILY
ASTORIAN
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mand killed themselves during
the second Gulf War in Iraq.
“Everyone wants to pro-
mote this as a gun bill. It’s
not,” Boquist said of the bill’s
opponents.
“We are only trying to tar-
get those individuals who
want to commit suicide and
may murder a spouse, children
or roommate in house. That is
how we wrote it.”
Connecticut has had a sim-
ilar law since 1999. Several
hundred protection orders have
been issued since then, Boquist
said. It’s “credited with saving
lives” and has been upheld by
the courts, he said.
About 40,000 people take
their lives nationwide each
year, according to federal sta-
tistics. Oregon has one of the
highest suicide rates in the
nation, including among veter-
ans, Boquist said.
The National Rifle Asso-
ciation and the Oregon Fire-
arms Federation continued to
oppose the legislation Monday
during a hearing in the House
Committee on Rules. Repre-
sentatives from both groups
said the bill denies gun own-
ers due process and provides
no mental health services
to address the root cause of
suicide.
a retired U.S. Coast Guard
commander, pointed out that
refined petroleum products
move up and down the river at
least five days a week, if not
on a daily basis.
There are products the
Pacific Northwest requires
for its economy and industry
to function, he said. If these
products weren’t being moved
on the river, they would be in
trucks on the highways.
“I think it’s a complex
issue,” he said. “Petroleum
products moving on the river,
it’s easy to say this is real
black and white, it’s bad. But
then again compared to the
alternatives, it moves safely
on the river now.”
The tankers that carry
petroleum products or other
hazardous chemicals must
pass stringent regulations.
When Jones was captain of
the port, he said he was more
worried about an oil spill from
a grain ship than from a petro-
leum tanker. They carry mas-
sive amounts of fuel and are
not maintained to the same
standards required of the
petroleum tankers.
Managing the proposed
transportation package
will cost $115.2 million
State could
hire 60 new
employees
By PARIS ACHEN
Capital Bureau
SALEM – Three state
agencies expect to hire 60
positions and spend $115.2
million to execute a proposed
$5.3 billion statewide trans-
portation funding bill.
The spending plan is sep-
arate from the greater trans-
portation funding legislation,
House Bill 2017. Both bills
are headed to a vote on the
floor of the state House later
this week. The Joint Com-
mittee on Ways and Means
on Monday voted to recom-
mend passage of the spend-
ing plan, called House Bill
5045.
The positions and agency
spending limits cover levy-
ing and collecting new taxes
and fees, managing and
reporting on transportation
projects, overseeing an elec-
tric vehicle rebate program
and processing a surge of
storm water permits.
The
spending
bill
includes:
• $110.9 million and 50
positions for the state Depart-
ment of Transportation for
direct project costs and proj-
ect-related studies in the first
six months of the next two-
year state budget cycle,
• $3.9 million and eight
positions for the state
Department of Revenue to
levy new taxes on payroll to
pay for transit, car and bicy-
cle excises taxes and hikes in
the gas tax.
• $389,122 and two posi-
tions for the Department
of Environmental Qual-
ity to establish a rebate pro-
gram for low- and moder-
ate-income residents who
purchase low-emission and
electric vehicles and to han-
dle a greater workload with
an influx of storm water
permitting.
The fate of the transpor-
tation package remains in
question after 16 Democrats
sent a letter to House Speaker
Tina Kotek, D-Portland, Sat-
urday suggesting the funding
plan may be in peril if law-
makers refuse to raise new
revenue before the July 10
constitutionally-mandated
end of the legislative session.
The Democrats want to use
the money for K-12 educa-
tion and general government
operations.
W A NTED
Alder and Maple Saw Logs & Standing Timber
LISTINGS
A - Charter Astoria/ Seaside - L - Charter Long Beach
“The grain business, they
operate on very small mar-
gins,” Jones said, “… so some
of those grain ships sitting out
there are real pieces of work.”
The river is a highway,
Jones said. “It’s a place of
beauty and natural resources
and fish and sea lions and
it’s also a highway and it has
been ever since before the first
white people came here. It
was a commercial highway.”
He said he respects the
work Columbia Riverkeeper
does to protect the environ-
mental health of the river.
He wants to look closely at
the project’s environmen-
tal impact statement, current
safety regulations related to
oil tankers, and talk to the bar
pilots who would be tasked
with guiding these tankers
back and forth across the dan-
gerous system of sandbars at
the Columbia River’s mouth
before giving his approval to
a resolution opposing the oil-
by-rail terminal project.
City staff will work with
Serres to craft a resolution to
bring before the City Council
in August.
N orth w es t H a rdw oods • Lon gview , W A
Contact: John Anderson • 360-269-2500
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