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A controversial plant near Clatskanie that would produce diesel fuel from used cooking oil, wood waste and fish guts took another step toward construction today when the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality approved the facility’s plans to protect water quality in the Columbia River and adjacent wetlands.
The controversial plant is being developed by Houston-based NXTClean Fuels. Company’s leaders say the plant will produce an environmentally-friendly fuel that will cut carbon emissions by replacing dirtier fossil fuels in trucks and airplanes. The volume of production—750 million gallons a day—would make the plant the largest producer of renewable diesel in the U.S.
“This approval is a pivotal milestone and a giant leap toward bringing a green fuels economy to Oregon,” NXTClean CEO Christopher Efird said in a statement. “We are celebrating today and staying focused as we aim for full federal approval later this year.”
Opponents say the plant will destroy rich farmland along the Columbia and create risks for spills of feedstocks like corn oil and grease as they are brought by rail across silty river bottom land that is vulnerable to shaking during an earthquake. The plant would also consume fossil fuels to produce its renewable diesel, critics say.
“For years, powerful political interests like Betsy Johnson and the building trades have greenwashed and lobbied for this refinery—along with a million barrels of fuel and feedstock and miles of new rail tracks—to be built on the banks of the Columbia River estuary,” Audrey Leonard, Staff Attorney for Columbia Riverkeeper, said in a statement. “Gov. Kotek and Oregon DEQ caved to that pressure, even though this refinery would be a major consumer of fossil fuels and seriously undermine Oregon’s greenhouse gas reduction goals.”
Johnson, a former state senator whose district included Clatskanie and the site of the proposed refinery, supports the $2 billion plant but says she never lobbied Kotek to get it approved.
“I have never made a formal appointment to talk to her, and I have never called her on the phone about this subject,” Johnson said in a telephone interview. “But I would meet with anyone who wanted to put a $2-billon, on-the-tax-role project in my district.”
NXTClean says the plant will create 3,500 jobs during construction and 240 permanent ones.
Local farmers say it’s not worth the risks.
“Gov. Kotek and DEQ are putting politics ahead of public safety, our health, and the health of our communities, and they are placing reckless faith in a bad company,” local farmer Brandon Schilling said in a statement. “DEQ’s decision would allow a massive polluter amid homes, wetlands, essential fish habitat, unstable soil, failing dikes, and across the road from an internationally known Buddhist monastery.”
Much of Oregon’s premium mint crop is grown on the farmland around the proposed plant site. The Great Vow Zen Monastery is three miles from it.
Leonard, the lawyer at Columbia Riverkeeper, said Kotek could have blocked the water permit but chose not to.
“Governor Kotek’s office was certainly aware of local, environmental, and tribal opposition to the project, and could have worked with DEQ to issue a denial based on the refinery’s water quality impacts,” Leonard said in an email.
A spokesman for Kotek didn’t immediately return an email seeking comment.
Columbia Riverkeeper said to expect an appeal. “We expect folks to come together and to challenge this,” said Dan Serres, Advocacy Director for Columbia Riverkeeper. “Thousands have stated opposition to this project, and thousands more will stand firm until the Houston-based polluter goes away.”
The NXTClean plant still needs a federal water permit, to be granted through a process overseen by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the company said. It also needs two state stormwater permits, but most developers consider those “more minor,” NXTClean spokesman Michael Hinrichs said in an email.