Montana, Washington governors discuss coal exports

By GEORGE TIBBITS

SEATTLE

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer says he thinks Washington state will give fair treatment to a proposal to build a major shipping terminal on the lower Columbia River to send Montana coal to China and other Asian countries.

Schweitzer and fellow Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire met in downtown Seattle Wednesday to discuss the proposal by Millennium Bulk Logistics to build the terminal west of Longview and export up to 5.7 million tons of coal a year. The coal would come by rail from the Powder River Basin in southeastern Montana and Wyoming.

In November, Cowlitz County commissioners voted to give Millennium, owned by Australian coal company Ambre Energy, a permit to redevelop the site. However, that decision was appealed last month to the Washington state Shorelines Hearings Board by four environmental groups.

The state Ecology Department has since asked to intervene in the appeal, saying the county should have analyzed greenhouse gas emissions more broadly and not just in the immediate area of the Longview project.

Schweitzer said both Montana and Washington should be behind the project, which would improve the economies and create jobs in both states.

"This is a fact-finding mission for me," said Schweitzer, who earlier in the day met with Cowlitz County officials and toured the site. One thing he was trying to understand, he said, is the resistance to exporting coal for foreign power plants as opposed to burning it in Montana to produce electricity transmitted to Washington and other states.

After meeting with Gregoire, he said he believes Washington simply wants the permit process done properly and to ensure the project meets state regulations. "I don't find any of that objectionable," he said.

"Everything I've heard about this company is that they are absolutely determined to play by the rules and regulations," Gregoire said.

The position of the environmental groups "is not the position of the state of Washington," she said. "We intervened to make sure that this process is done right."

While not wanting to get personally involved in the dispute, Gregoire has made trade with China a priority, spending 10 days last fall in that country and Vietnam to drum up business.

She agreed with Schweitzer that the Longview site needs to be cleaned up and that something has to be done about the area's double-digit unemployment. Furthermore, "I don't believe that we can say no to a commodity like coal any more than I would say no to a commodity like wheat," she said.

K.C. Golden, policy director for Climate Solutions, one of the groups behind the permit challenge, sat down with the governors after their meeting. He said exporting coal for China to burn would increase greenhouse gases and do little to help Washington switch to a greener economy.

"What we wanted to do is establish that the process would do a full and credible and fair job of analyzing the environmental impacts and I think we've taken a step in that direction," he said.