On Tuesday, Oct. 1, a smattering of law students gathered in the McCarty Classroom Complex for the Northwest Environmental Defense Center (NEDC) Weekly Speaker Series. This week, Attorney Audrey Leonard presented on her work with Columbia Riverkeeper: “Greenwashing on the Columbia: NEXT ‘Renewable’ Diesel Refinery at Port Westward.” Leonard graduated from the Lewis & Clark Law School in 2020 and served as the Editor-in-Chief of Environmental Law, the nation’s oldest law review dedicated solely to environmental issues, during her time as a law student.
Her presentation covered the work her organization is doing to prevent the construction of a non-conventional diesel refinery along the Columbia River, the largest river in the Pacific Northwest of North America which runs from British Columbia into Oregon, at a base called Port Westward — also known as the Port of Columbia County.
The proposed site sits alongside the Columbia River Estuary, a partially-enclosed region of the Columbia River where saltwater and freshwater combine to create a unique ecosystem for salmon, shorebirds and other wildlife. Estuaries are known for their diverse habitats and biologically-productive ecosystems.
Leonard grounded the audience in the scenery of Port Westward and the Columbia River with photos and maps in her presentation before delving into the legality of the matter, and the dangers of the proposed refinery.
“It’s next to another biofuels refinery by the water, but the area that it’s proposed to be in is still very agricultural,” said Leonard. “There are a lot of active mint farms, blueberries, some cattle, poplar trees. It’s all heavily agricultural.”
She described the potential impact of the construction on the hydrology of the Columbia River Estuary.
“To build it, they would be filling 100 acres of wetlands, and in order to get away with that, they’d have to propose mitigation — so basically creating man-made wetlands at 400+ acres,” said Leonard. “This is one of the largest wetland fill authorizations that the state of Oregon has authorized, I think, since 2011. So it’s really huge.”
The Houston-based company advocating for the construction of the refinery is called NEXT Renewable Fuels. Their website states that if the permits are approved, they will construct a “renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel hub with production capacity of up to 50,000 barrels of clean fuel per year.”
Leonard tells a different story.
“We take issue with them calling it renewable fuels,” she said. “At the end of the day, we feel the way they are using the word renewable is greenwashing, and that is because they want to power their facility using fracked gas, and they would use the same amount of fracked gas as the city of Eugene on an annual basis.”
The term “greenwashing” refers to the deliberate and deceptive efforts that a company or entity employs to convince the public that they are doing their part to protect the environment, when in reality, they are distracting or delaying the public from enforcing concrete and credible action. Examples of greenwashing include intentionally misleading labels such as “green” or “eco-friendly,” false claims to be on track to reduce a company’s carbon footprint and purposefully vague statements about a company’s operations and materials used.
Leonard explained that although several renewable diesels are often marketed as clean energy, their renewability depends upon the type of feedstocks used to produce them. Lower carbon feedstocks, such as used cooking oil or fish grease, are ideal — because they are waste products that are being repurposed to create renewable diesel. High carbon feedstocks, such as soybean oil, corn oil, palm oil and vegetable oil, are purposely cultivated, and therefore still contribute to carbon emissions through the farming, distilling and transport of the product.
“In this situation, NEXT is proposing to ship soybean oils, vegetable oils that are purpose-grown from the Midwest by train, all the way up here,” said Leonard. “You have to think about all those emissions in the life cycle of creating that fuel, and that includes all the gas that it requires to go through the refinery process.”
She then shifted to talk about the impact of the proposed refinery on the local community and its agriculture.
She mentioned the Clatskanie Farmer Collective Food Hub, a local non-profit marketplace for agriculturalists, farmers and vendors within a 100-mile radius of Clatskanie, which sits alongside the Columbia River, approximately seven miles away from Port Westward.
She also noted that the NEXT proposal is across the street from the Great Vow Zen Monastery, which sits atop a hill near Port Westward. She shared that there are about 75 people who live at the monastery year-round, but that the monastery hosts large silent retreats with more than 100 non-permanent guests who come seeking the peace and quiet of the land.
“If this refinery is built, their smokestack will be at eye level with the monastery,” said Leonard. “These folks have been really engaged in a lot of the permitting processes in the public comments, and we feel, and they feel, that regulators have silenced them and not listened to them in the way that they have listened to the industry’s promises of prosperity.”
Another example of a community member whose livelihood has already been impacted by NEXT is Warren Seely, a fourth-generation mint farmer in Clatskanie, who was ordered to uproot 19 acres of premium, world-class mint, despite having cultivated on the land for 11 years.
“Columbia County sent Warren a letter, and they were like, ‘Hey, by the way, we’re ending your lease, because we have this really exciting opportunity with NEXT, we want them to be able to build their own yard,’” said Leonard. “(This) was really just a slap in the face for someone like Warren, who has been a steward of the land and has really taken care of it and has been there for a really long time.”
In addition to concerns about high-carbon feedstocks, the unintended consequences of human-made wetlands and the loss of local agriculture, Leonard expressed a fourth environmental concern related to the construction of NEXT’s proposed refinery.
“One of the big buzzwords in the Pacific Northwest in terms of salmon right now is a chemical called 6PPD q(uinone), and that’s a chemical that is in all of our vehicle tires and heavy duty equipment tires,” said Leonard. “This is a chemical that, as the tires drive on roads, it comes off, it washes into our water systems, and is hugely impactful on salmon. It’s acutely toxic.”
Leonard explained how the operation and construction of the site would require lots of driving around the Columbia River, and therefore would release high amounts of 6PPD-quinone into the local ecosystem.
Leonard shared that she had a biological assessment — obtained from a public records request from a consultant hired by NEXT acknowledging the toxicity of 6PPD quinone for salmon and the inevitable release of large amounts of the chemical in the hypothetical construction and operation of the proposed refinery.
She cited several other arguments that Columbia Riverkeeper is employing to protect the state of the Columbia River from the implicit consequences of NEXT’s proposed non-conventional diesel refinery. From the inadequacy of their stormwater ponds and treatment facilities, to their poorly-maintained levees to the risk of an earthquaking initiating spillage of the facility’s contents into the river, she made it abundantly clear that Columbia Riverkeeper is dedicated to protecting the Columbia River.
Leonard encouraged law students and community members to get involved with Columbia Riverkeeper’s advocacy by submitting written comments before Oct. 25, testifying at the Oct. 8 hearing at 6 p.m. on Zoom, signing Columbia Riverkeeper’s petition to Governor Kotek and the DEQ and staying informed on the matter by signing up for emails at columbiariverkeeper.org and reading the blog Greenwashing on the Columbia.
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