After almost 30 years as a tenant at the Port of Astoria, heavy civil marine, dredging and environmental contractor J.E. McAmis is pulling up ties and moving upriver to Longview.

Scott Vandegrift, project manager for J.E. McAmis, said his company decided to relocate operations to Washington state after failing to reach an agreement for a long-term lease with the port.

“We’ve been back and forth trying to secure a long-term lease, but it never worked out for everybody,” he said. “Then this opportunity came along, and we thought it was a good one and jumped on it.”

That new opportunity was the acquisition of 122 acres at the West Coast Marine facility near the mouth of the Cowlitz River where it joins the Columbia River at Longview.

Vandegrift said J.E. McAmis was one of the Port of Astoria’s best tenants, leasing 8,000 square feet of warehouse space, tarmac space at the airport, upland space and pier space on the Columbia River.

“I believe we were one of the highest-paying tenants the port had, one of its biggest tenants,” he said. “It’s kind of sad to go; it’s a lovely community.”

But Port of Astoria Executive Director Jim Knight said he will have no problems finding a new tenant.

“We never like to lose customers, but we have no issues or trouble trying to find new tenants,” Knight said. “They’ve been here a long time but are moving for their operations. For us, it’s a drop in the bucket.”

The move from Astoria to Longview will be completed by the fall, Vandegrift said, and will include a fleet of barges, tug boats, cranes and other heavy equipment.

“The move is pretty significant,” he said. “We’ve been in Astoria for close to 30 years.”

However, the Longview location offers “a lot of potential” because it has more land available for development than what was available in Astoria, Vandegrift said.

About a dozen people who work for J.E. McAmis in Astoria are all residents of that city and will commute to the new site, Vandergrift said.

The new location at the mouth of the Cowlitz will give J.E. McAmis a much more centralized location on the Columbia River, said company founder and president, John E. McAmis, in a statement.

The company’s Pacific Northwest operations will remain heavily focused on supporting the U.S. Corps of Engineers on the West Coast, the Columbia-Snake River Basin and in Alaska, McAmis said, but the move will help the company expand its private market base. J.E. McAmis’ work includes dredging, dam rehabilitation, heavy and high-lift services, dive supported construction and environmental restoration.

To aid in completing the $300 million North Jetty Critical Repairs Project at the mouth of the Columbia River for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, McAmis’ company has acquired many new cranes, barges and support equipment. McAmis said he believes the new equipment – along with “exceptional” highway, rail and barge access to the new location near Longview – will give his company an advantage in securing more jetty projects in the future.

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Updated: Thursday, January 6, 2011 at 01:30 PM PT

Longview, Wash., became a contentious battle ground on Wednesday, with coal in the middle.

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer met with Cowlitz County commissioners and Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire about a proposal for development of a facility at the Port of Longview where Montana coal would be exported to China. But many residents at the public meeting spoke out against the project, saying it would provide little economic benefit to their community and the state.

Millennium Bulk Logistics, a subsidiary of Australian company Ambre Energy, last year took a step toward developing a facility where 5.7 million tons of coal could be received from the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming. The project would provide 120 construction jobs, 70 permanent positions at the facility and $3.2 million in annual tax revenue for the county and the state, according to Millennium.

But for Montana, the proposed facility represents more than just jobs, according to Bud Clinch, executive director of the Montana Coal Council. It represents a gateway to increased coal business with Pacific Rim countries.

Montana exports 4 million tons of coal annually from a port near Vancouver, British Columbia. But that port is at capacity, Clinch said. If an export facility were approved in Longview, Montana could more than double its coal exports. A ton of Powder River Basin coal was valued at $13.50 in 2009, so Montana could gain approximately $76.9 million more in gross revenue annually.

Increased mining activity would create 120 jobs in Montana, Clinch said, as well as new transportation-related jobs. Without the Longview facility, stakeholders would need to look at exporting coal through another port in British Columbia, at a greater cost.

“The Longview facility would be a benefit to our state,” Clinch said. “There’s a huge opportunity for greater volumes of coal to be exported to Pacific Rim countries. We’d like to see an even larger facility come about.”

Residents testifying at the public meeting, however, were less enthusiastic about the project, according to Brett VandenHeuvel, executive director of Columbia Riverkeeper. He was at the meeting, and said 20 of the 70 attendees testified. They questioned how much the coal facility would contribute to their community’s economy.

The 416-acre site where the coal facility would be built is presently leased to Chinook Ventures, which employs 50 people. If the 70-employee coal facility were approved, Millennium would purchase Chinook’s buildings and assume their lease from Alcoa Inc. That’s a net gain of only 20 jobs, VandenHeuvel said.

“There is tremendous potential for growth on port sites along the Columbia,” VandenHeuvel said. “Other Columbia River ports are doing well with grain and potash. This facility would be a big black eye for Longview, which is trying to attract better family-wage jobs and cleaner industries. The underlying message from residents was: ‘We can do better.’ ”

Washington, meanwhile, continues to rely on coal, most of which comes from the Powder River Basin, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The coal is burned at Washington’s only coal-fired power plant, near a closed coal mine in the southwestern part of the state.

Cowlitz County Commission Chairman George Raiter said citizens concerned about burning coal should use less energy. The commission in November approved a shoreline development permit for the project.

“People overlook the fact that China is currently burning Indonesian coal, which has 10 times the emissions of Montana coal, according to Governor Schweitzer,” Raiter said. “In Washington we continue to drive to work in SUVs and watch big-screen televisions that depend on coal for electricity.”

Washington has implemented goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and switch to renewable power, and those efforts would be hampered if coal were exported through Longview, VandenHeuvel said.

“Montana is sitting on a lot of coal reserves because coal is not selling well in the U.S. right now,” VandenHeuvel said. “If Montana can open up that Asian market and sell coal that’s not acceptable here to China, those companies are going to make a huge profit and Washington will be stuck with the impacts of dirty coal.”

After five environmental groups in December appealed the shoreline development permit, the Washington State Department of Ecology joined the appeal, calling for a broader environmental analysis of the greenhouse gases associated with the project. The Washington Shoreline Hearings Board will hear the case in April. The board must rule on the terminal application before June 14.

Gregoire said she wouldn’t stand in the way of the project, but added that all of the state’s regulatory processes will be followed before any decisions are made, according to Cory Curtis, communications director for the governor.

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A coal export facility proposed for construction near Longview, Wash., was appealed Monday by environmental groups. They claim Cowlitz County officials acted outside the best interest of the community by failing to consider impacts the facility would have beyond the state.

Washington state guidelines inform local jurisdictions which environmental impacts must be considered when determining whether a construction project needs a full environmental analysis. But while the guidelines encourage officials to look beyond their areas when considering these impacts, they don’t require them to do so, according to Washington’s Department of Ecology.

The appeal was filed Monday by Earthjustice, Climate Solutions, Columbia Riverkeeper, Sierra Club and the Washington Environmental Council. They want to invalidate the project’s shoreline development permit approved by Cowlitz County and require the county to complete a full Environmental Impact Statement. The project, proposed by Millennium Bulk Logistics, calls for constructing a facility along the Columbia River where 5.7 million tons of Wyoming and Montana coal could be exported to Asia annually.

Cowlitz County, according to Earthjustice attorney Jan Hasselman, did not take into account increased coal use in Asia, increased coal mining activity in Wyoming and Montana, increased transportation of coal via ship to Asia and other impacts outside state lines when it determined the facility to have a non-significant environmental impact. The process used to weigh environmental criteria, the , allows local officials to forgo a full environmental impact statement if a project is environmentally non-significant.

“We feel Cowlitz County’s conclusion is wrong,” Hasselman said. “SEPA requires consideration of all impacts without regard to where they occur and explicitly calls for consideration of the global nature of environmental problems. The issue here is whether more mining and more coal burning are effects of the project. And if they are, they have to be considered.”

The county, however, received no guidance at a state level to include anything related to the consequences of the project in other countries or other states in their SEPA analysis, according to Mike Wojtowicz, director of the Cowlitz County Department of Building and Planning. He said surface treatments applied to the coal at the project site and on the train cars that would bring the coal through the Columbia Gorge from Wyoming, were sufficient enough for the county to render its decision.

“I feel the county did proper due diligence,” Wojtowicz said. “The guidance I have from the state Department of Ecology is that we can’t consider those impacts related to consequences of burning coal in Asia.”

But Washington state law does allow local officials to examine a project’s impacts outside city lines, according to Annie Szvetecz, a SEPA policy lead with the state Department of Ecology. A requirement in the SEPA rules says that officials should not limit examination of a project’s impacts to the area within their local jurisdiction. Enforcement of that requirement, however, is nearly impossible, Szvetecz said.

“SEPA is a very hard tool to enforce because it relies on citizens to appeal,” Szvetecz said. “There is one provision in SEPA that says not to limit your analysis to impacts within your jurisdiction, but it doesn’t say how far you have to go or where to draw those boundaries.”

This will be the first case examining the SEPA process and how it should consider out-of-state impacts, but the National Environmental Policy Act has been the subject of several cases where communities have appealed because of the environmental issues that projects would cause in other places, according to Steve Jones, an attorney with Martin Law in Seattle.

In Border Power Working Group v. Department of Energy, for example, the U.S. district court for Southern California ruled that the Department of Energy failed to assess greenhouse gas emissions associated with a project to connect the California grid with two coal-fired plants in Mexico. The DOE then had to evaluate how the project would increase emissions globally, not just locally, Jones said.

Washington state has failed to adopt rules or provide guidance for local officials to consider environmental impacts that projects could have in other places, Hasselman said. As a result, issues often end up in court. The state, however, is presently examining how to add provisions to SEPA that would consider climate change.

Hasselman hopes this case will bring attention to the matter, and result in more concrete direction from the state Department of Ecology on how to consider out-of-state environmental impacts. The appeal process is expected to last through summer 2011.

“It can be tricky assessing energy and climate, but that doesn’t mean agencies don’t have a duty,” Hasselman said. “It means the state has not helped define how to carry it out.”

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Cowlitz County’s board of commissioners today approved a shoreline development permit for a coal export facility near Longview, Wash.

Millennium Bulk Logistics, a subsidiary of Australian company Ambre Energy, plans to construct an export terminal that will send 5.7 million tons of coal annually from Wyoming and Montana to Asia. The approval of the shoreline permit means the company could start construction soon. But Millennium anticipates the decision will be appealed by environmental groups, who have expressed concern about the project.

“Our next steps depend on different things,” said Joe Cannon, CEO of Millennium. “Some environmental groups may appeal, which will mean a longer period of time until we can begin construction. There’s a window between October and January where you can do work in the (Columbia) River, if you miss that, you have to wait.”

County Commission Chair George Raiter said the commission has received many emails in the past week from residents with concerns about burning coal for energy in China and the role their area would play in the process. But concerns about burning coal, Raiter said, should have been brought up during the state’s Environmental Policy Act process, which analyzes the environmental impacts of Washington state projects.

“It’s disappointing that this enthusiasm didn’t come at the proper time,” Raiter said. “All of the issues concerning the environmental impact of coal were covered in the (State Environmental Policy Act) process. SEPA doesn’t allow us to consider environmental impacts outside the country.”

The export facility has already received a determination of non-significance from the state Department of Ecology, Raiter said, which means the state found no major environmental threats that cannot be mitigated by Millennium. Millennium plans to clean up the site, a former aluminum smelting facility, as well as use coal dust suppression technology to keep the dust from the facility from effecting nearby communities, Cannon said.

Though a general contractor has not been selected, Cannon anticipates construction of the 525,000-square-foot export facility to employ 120 construction workers. The completed facility will also employ 70 people. Construction is expected to take two to three years, depending on the appeals process, Cannon said.

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The metropolitan areas hit hardest by the construction industry recession show only the depth of the recession. Looking at the best-performing cities can show the recession’s breadth.

Of 337 metro areas, only eight added jobs over the last year, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. And, on closer examination, it’s not so good even at the top.

Reno, Nev., is the worst. The area lost 5,900 jobs, or 35 percent of its workforce, over the last year.

Longview, Wash., ranks third in the nation for construction job growth, adding 100 jobs, or 3 percent of its workforce from August 2008 through August 2009, according to BLS data. But those gains exist only on paper, the state’s economist for the area says.

The economy in Cowlitz County and its largest city, Longview, is terrible, said Scott Bailey, regional labor economist with the Washington State Employment Security Department. If it were any worse, it would be Clark County.

Longview’s population growth has been slow for years, Bailey said. While that meant the city didn’t experience much of a housing bubble, there’s still little homebuilding, and fewer building permits are being issued compared to previous years.

The rest of Longview’s construction economy hasn’t done any better, Bailey said. Based on the state’s data, the area lost 900 jobs, or 25 percent of its workforce, from August 2008 to August 2009.

Neither Bailey nor Todd Johnson, an economist with the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ western region, could explain the difference between the state and federal data for Longview. Both use the same raw survey data, although they compile the numbers differently, Johnson said. The BLS presents a snapshot, while the state updates its data continuously, he said.

Whatever the numbers indicate, Bailey said, no one is looking to Longview as a construction success story.

“They’ve had quite a bit of job loss over the past year, pretty much like everybody else,” he said.

“They have one of the highest unemployment rates in the state,” Bailey said. “Clark County is number one and Cowlitz is number two.”

Seizing on the BLS numbers, where even the good news is bad news, the Associated General Contractors of America released a plan Wednesday asking the federal government to offer more help for the construction industry. The association’s leaders chose the Reno area, not Longview, to announce the plan.

Called “Build Now for the Future: A Blueprint for Economic Growth,” the plan presents a laundry list of tax cuts, credits and financing changes and new spending on construction projects. Those include doubling annual spending on transportation construction programs to $120 billion and spending at least $7 billion on waterways for flood control and navigation.

Calling for more spending is politically risky, AGC leaders acknowledged, stressing the importance of construction on job creation and increased economic activity. They also called for some new taxes to pay for the investments, including a doubling of the federal gas tax.

Doubling that tax would cost the average family $30 per year, association spokesman Brian Turmail said Wednesday. “That’s a cost that could translate to less time stuck in traffic and less late fees for day-care centers,” he said.

The federal stimulus package provides $135 billion for construction, said Stephen Sandherr, the association’s chief executive officer. Despite some criticisms, the package has been successful, he said, while urging federal officials to speed up some projects.

“The average contractor, the average AGC member, would say that without the stimulus money out there they would hate to see what our industry would look like,” Sandherr said. “So far, it has saved over 100,000 jobs.
“What we’ve been concerned with is the spend-out rate. Less than 40 percent, outside of the stimulus for transportation construction, has gone out.”

For Longview, at least, some good news is coming, Bailey said. The Port of Longview is starting work on a $200 million grain terminal project that will bring construction jobs to the area.

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