The governor has appointed an interim leader of the state board evaluating the Vancouver Energy oil terminal.
Gov. Jay Inslee chose Roselyn Marcus, an attorney and assistant director of legal and legislative affairs at the Office of Financial Management, as the interim chair of the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council.
“Roselyn has decades of legal experience and a strong understanding of Washington state agencies,” Inslee said in a news release. “As interim chair, I am confident she will exemplify the fairness and impartiality demanded by the (evaluation council’s) process.”
Marcus will assume her new role Sept. 11. She is replacing Chairman Bill Lynch, who announced his plans to resign at an evaluation council meeting earlier this month.
Lynch has been chair of the council since 2013, just before it began evaluating the Vancouver Energy oil terminal.
Lynch’s resignation came just as the more than four-year-long evaluation of the terminal is nearing completion. His announcement surprised people involved in the project’s evaluation and observers alike.
In his resignation letter, Lynch cited tensions between his council and some members of the Washington Attorney General’s office.
It’s unclear what, if any, impact Marcus’ late arrival to the council will have on the evaluation of what would be the nation’s largest rail-to-marine oil terminal.
“It shouldn’t impact the timeline,” said Tara Lee, a spokeswoman for the governor’s office. “I think she’s going to spend the time between now and when her appointment starts getting up to speed.”
Marcus has a long career in the public sector, including a seven-year stint as an assistant state attorney general in the early 1990s. From 2003 to 2011 she served as director of legal affairs at the Office of Financial Management. Following that, she became assistant director for the contracts and legal services division at the Department of Enterprise Services. In 2013, she returned to the Office of Financial Management.
She holds a bachelor’s degree in business from New York University and a law degree from Pace University in New York City.
The Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council reviews large energy projects through a quasi-judicial process that includes public hearings and studies before making a recommendation to the governor that a project should be approved or denied.
Following that recommendation the governor has 60 days to approve, deny or return the project to the council for further consideration.
The Vancouver Energy oil terminal is the only project the council is currently reviewing.
Earlier this month, the council granted a seventh deadline extension, giving itself until Nov. 30 to forward a recommendation to Inslee.
If it’s approved, the $210 million terminal would be built at the Port of Vancouver. It would be capable of transferring an average of 360,000 barrels of oil per day from crude oil unit trains into marine vessels in the Columbia River bound for refineries along the West Coast.
