Methanol Hearing Today (12/13) in Longview, WA

Port of Kalama and Cowlitz County, WA will hold a public hearing regarding the Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the world’s largest fracked-gas-to-methanol refinery in Kalama, WA, today, Thursday, December 13, 2018, rally at 5:15 p.m., hearing from 6-9 p.m. 

Today (12/13) Public Hearing and Rally about Proposed
Fracked-Gas-to-Methanol Refinery

  • WHAT: Port of Kalama and Cowlitz County, WA will hold a public hearing regarding the Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the world’s largest fracked-gas-to-methanol refinery in Kalama, WA, today, Thursday, December 13, 2018, rally at 5:15 p.m., hearing from 6-9 p.m. The Port of Kalama and Cowlitz County will take public comments on the draft EIS until December 28, 2018.
     
  • WHO: Rally speakers to include diverse voices standing up for communities and deny this fossil fuel refinery because of the impacts on local residents’ health, property rights and our climate.
    • Mike Reuter, Mayor of Kalama
    • Susan Powell Groat, Landowner on proposed pipeline to methanol refinery
    • Paul Cheoketen Wagner, Protectors of the Salish Sea
    • Melanie Plaut, Physicians for Social Responsibility
       
  • WHEN: Today, (Thursday, Dec. 13, 2018); Rally, banners and key speakers at 5:15 p.m.; Hearing from 6-9 p.m.  
     
  • WHERE: Cowlitz County Event Center; 1900 7th Avenue; Longview, WA.

Live-tweeting #powerpastfrackedgas

Resources:

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Background: A subsidiary of the Chinese Academy of Sciences called Northwest Innovation Works (NWIW) seeks to build methanol refineries at Kalama, WA, and Port Westward, OR, to take advantage of the region’s cheap fracked gas (methane), electricity, and water. The refineries would convert stunning volumes of fracked gas into methanol for export to China, to make plastics or fuel China’s growing fleet of automobiles. According to NWIW’s own estimates, the Kalama facility would consume 270,000 dekatherms of fracked gas per day—increasing Washington’s total fracked gas consumption by over one third. In addition, the ramped-up extraction and transportation of the fracked gas needed to supply this facility would result in increased emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas that is 87 times more powerful than carbon dioxide during the time it remains in the atmosphere.


Legal Overview: In 2017, the Washington Shorelines Hearings Board, in a case brought by Columbia Riverkeeper, the Sierra Club, and the Center for Biological Diversity—represented by Earthjustice—ruled the that the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the methanol refinery violated the law because the EIS failed to consider the full climate impacts of the project. The Board overturned the permits for the methanol refinery. The new EIS issued today attempts to comply with the Board’s order to evaluate the full climate impacts.