NW Innovation Works is proposing a $1.8 billion facility at the Port of Kalama to convert natural gas to methanol.
Cowlitz County has taken issue with the Washington State Department of Ecology’s request for more information before a key permit needed for a proposed $2 billion methanol plant in Kalama can move forward. Last week, the county submitted a letter to the department saying that they were holding the project to higher standards than other large-scale projects without the help or guidance from the department on how to meet requirements.
On Nov. 4, Cowlitz County Building and Planning Director Elaine Placido sent a letter to Ecology that pushed back on Ecology’s own Oct. 9 letter, which deemed an environmental impact study incomplete. The study was submitted to analyze greenhouse gas emissions the plant would produce.
Among claims in the letter, Placido wrote that Ecology had “evaded” requests from departments and agencies working on the project to go over parts of the mitigation plan before the county was “confronted with an uncompromising, 30-day, shot-clock letter, on threat of stalemating the process.”
The letter also argued that the information requested in Ecology’s letter went beyond the requirements of state laws regarding environmental and shoreline impacts.
“The County is frustrated that the (Kalama methanol) project is facially being held to a different standard on GHG mitigation detail in (the State Environmental Protection Act) than Ecology proffered in its own environmental documents,” Placido wrote.
She claimed the project was being held to a higher standard that was found in other large-scale projects such as the Millennium Bulk Terminals in Longview and the Tacoma WestRock.
The letter came with clarifications of greenhouse gas mitigation contained in the initially-submitted environmental study submitted by the port and Cowlitz County Building and Planning Aug. 30. That study was itself a response to a state hearings board decision in 2017 that a prior study didn’t adequately address greenhouse gas emissions from the project.
The plant is proposed by Northwest Innovation Works and if completed would turn methane gas into methanol to be used in plastics manufacturing. The county had until Nov. 7 to respond, with Ecology rendering a decision on the needed permit or requesting another environmental review within 30 days.
In a statement from the Power Past Fracked Gas Coalition the proposed project was decried as “a carbon bomb that would lock Washington into decades of fossil fuel use.”
“Washington’s Department of Ecology has repeatedly asked for basic information, and (Northwest Innovation Works) has once again refused to provide a complete, thorough response,” the statement read.
