It was with surprise and dismay that I read Port of Camas-Washougal Commissioner Bill Ward’s Nov. 20 letter, “Debatable trade-off not worth risk,” condemning the oil trans-load facility proposed for the Port of Vancouver.
Ward asserts that the facts are misrepresented and the oil will be exported, increasing our energy dependency. In fact, this American oil will replace over 200,000 barrels of crude per day currently imported from our good friends, the Saudis, the United Arab Emirates and the Russians. Ward also suggests that Tesoro is an unsafe shipper, using cars that did not conform to U.S. Department of Transportation standards. Fact: BNSF Railway is not going move any shippers’ cars that are unsafe and Tesoro plans to purchase hundreds of new cars to service our port.
My fellow Port of Vancouver commissioners and I carefully considered the risks and weighed them against the opportunity. However Ward or anyone else chooses to characterize it, our decision was not made lightly.
To Ward, I say, “Check your facts. Don’t use innuendo, half-truths and straw man arguments. You are an engineer and would not use sloppy data to support a project. Don’t start now.”
