On Feb. 19, the Portland Business Alliance submitted a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission stating that its 1,900 members joined together in supporting the Jordan Cove/Pacific Connector Pipeline project in Coos Bay. Yes, this is the same Portland Business Alliance that sued Portland for passing its No New Fossil Fuels Infrastructure law – the courageous environmental shot heard round the world.

I really wasn’t shocked that a pro-business raze-and-burn-at-all-costs mindset would support the most environmentally disastrous project in the history of Oregon. I kind of figured that those in charge of the PBA would support Atilla the Hun if he promised jobs burying the dead. And I really wasn’t shocked that Portland General Electric would spearhead PBA support while out of the other side of its mouth claiming to support “renewable” and “sustainable” futures, patting themselves on the back as a real eco-friendly energy company.

No, what’s shocking is that so many members of the Portland Business Alliance profess to be sustainable, environmentally friendly and renewable-resource-supporting organizations, yet they go along with this endorsement affront to all that could be left of Oregon’s reputation as an environmental leader. Either their mission statements and public pronouncements are lies or they just do not understand what is really going on here.

The pipeline part of this project builds a 230-mile-long, 100-foot-wide swath of slashed-and-burned, chemically maintained, plantless dirt (2,000 acres) from Malin to Coos Bay and trespasses over the lands of hundreds of private property owners without their consent to house a huge, 36-inch-diameter, high-pressure, fracked-gas pipeline (fracking being the most environmentally destructive way to extract gas).

This proposal would cross 400 salmon-spawning streams and five major rivers (Rogue, Umpqua, Coos, Coquille and Klamath), where horizontal drilling will be used to push pipes under them. This is a highly dangerous operation that has caused water-quality-killing drilling fluids to leak and move downstream, as documented in similar projects in Pennsylvania, Ohio and other states, and everyone knows that all pipelines will leak; it’s just a matter of time.

The project’s location is in a liquefaction zone – where the soil actually becomes liquid during an earthquake (now long overdue) and right on the coast, where tsunamis threaten to trigger massive explosions and produce unstoppable and unfightable fires with miles of death and destruction. There’s also the real threat of carcinogen emissions, in addition to hazardous air and water contaminants at the expanded Malin compressor station, and the potential to exacerbate any forest fire with pipes leaking undetectably all along the route.

This is a project with the power to destroy local oyster farming and fishing industries and wipe out tourism for all except those who want to see ships the length of three football fields load up and carry one of the world’s most dangerously explosive products to Asia. Yup, none of it for domestic consumption, and it’s all for sale only overseas with Oregonians paying the ultimate price.

Yeah, what’s not to like about this project?

PBA members – all of them, not just the ones who would never support this if they understood what this project stands for – should immediately and publicly denounce this endorsement and withdraw their support for this toxic environmental doomsday project and windfall for Canadian billionaires. The proposal comes from Pembina, based in Calgary, Alberta. To PBA members outraged at their uninformed consent, I say join some other group that really gives a (expletive) about the air we breathe, the water we drink and the beauty that should be Oregon.

This project is now worth an estimated $10 billion (yes billion with a B). Corporate eyes glaze over with the potential wealth accumulation, and it’ll take a whole lot more than showing polar bears adrift all alone on melting ice flows to defeat this heinous climate-destructive project. Visit the Columbia Riverkeeper, Rogue Riverkeeper, Rogue Climate and Sightline Institute websites to find out where you can act to oppose and comment.

This is high stakes poker and the proponents dynamically shift tactics and legal positions to chameleon themselves to whatever is working at the time. That they’ve been pushing some form of this project for over 11 years is a testament to the pot of gold they believe awaits.

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Jordan Cove sprung to life in 2007 in an application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission as an import terminal. At that time, proponents counted on making a lot of money selling imported gas domestically, even figuring in the importing costs. But boom-time fracking hit the nation, and the global energy markets shifted to accommodate. Project owners at that time – the machinations in ownership alone is worthy of its own story – ditched those import plans to position the Jordan Cove project as an export terminal because the price of gas in Asia was substantially more than here in the U.S.

On a parallel and sometimes overlapping track with the federal permitting, the state of Oregon approval process was going on and still is: Oregon has yet to approve it. This project requires state Department of Environmental Quality blessings, as well as a big kiss from the State Land Use Board (three members: the governor, the secretary of state and the state treasurer.) Proponents have to pass both federal and state permitting processes.

In a stunning 2016 victory for project opponents, FERC actually denied the permit for the export project (the import project now off the table). That was quite a shocking event since the agency historically never saw an energy project it didn’t like. This export project should have failed on many fronts, but FERC hung its hat on the project’s lack of landowner consent (Williams Pacific Connector, the pipeline construction company could only corral easements from 9.6 percent of the landowners) and the lack of actual sales contracts in Asia. Since then, Williams has upped its price to gain more landowners’ consent and has threatened landowners that Williams has the power to use eminent domain to force easements upon them if landowners do not consent. Eminent domain is based on the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, basically allowing state and federal governments to take land for “public” use and pay fair compensation. Here, Williams has turned eminent domain on its head and wants to clear-cut a legal way for a foreign corporation to force Oregon’s environment and natural resources to do its corporate bidding and compel landowners against their will to surrender their land for the project.

FURTHER READING: Jordan Cove LNG pipeline ‘a never-ending nightmare’

Trump stacked the deck at FERC in 2017 after he appointed industry shills to majority positions on that commission. So no one was shocked when Jordan Cove owners re-applied for a permit and now expect a favorable outcome this time around. Still, the state approval process continues. In a possible endgame, if proponents lose at the state level, they might sue Oregon for violating the commerce clause of the Constitution, a legal theory which could get to the U.S. Supreme Court where Trump has again stacked the deck with his pro-NRA anti-environment soul mate.

It sounds Dickensian and Shakespearean all at once. Gov. Kate Brown could stop the project on her own but has yet to take a public stand. Stay tuned, and get on those websites to see what you can do.

Rick Rappaport is part of Stop Fracked Gas PDX, a member of the Climate Action Coalition and a member of 350PDX.

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