Limiting Export Opportunities

I'm Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

Both the proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal and the proposed Millennium Bulk Terminals export facilities were considered under an expanded State Environmental Policy Act scoping process. John Stuhlmiller with the Washington Farm Bureau.

STUHLMILLER: It's very troubling when looking at the issue and it has come to 'can facilities be built and if those facilities are built for a particular commodity what's the worldwide impact of the use of that commodity'. We've lost sight of the fact that the key notion of SEPA is to protect residents around a facility.

Stuhlmiller explains how an expanded global SEPA process could affect trade in Washington.

STUHLMILLER: The environmental community picked a commodity - coal. If you don't build infrastructure based on a commodity you don't want to see shipped through your state or in your state you won't have the infrastructure necessary to be able to ship - to export, then you will hinder that access to the market. So, we as Washington growers will have to ship through Oregon, through Canada. Canada is more than happy to take on our shipment, but it means higher cost and less value to the producer. You want shipping costs to be as low as possible and the only way to have low shipping costs is to have options. Don't build these two facilities for instance - you loose opportunity for infrastructure, and you will either look outside the state or you'll have aging or insufficient infrastructure.

Currently the expanded SEPA process has been limited to these two projects but there's a very real possibility that it could be applied to future projects as well.

STUHLMILLER: That's the concern. The statute wasn't created with that in mind. It may have some loose language that says look at other impacts, but it doesn't mandate it. So once we go down that path it's open and everything from here on out would have to follow that.

That's Washington Ag Today.

I'm Lacy Gray on the Ag Information Network.