[Vision2020] Why the Port REALLY Wants Megaloads

[Ron Force]

Idaho's Port of Lewiston in business slump 
By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS, Associated Press Writer Story Updated: 			Oct 11, 2010 
at 12:17 PM PST  

 
LEWISTON, Idaho (AP) - The big barges and small cruise  ships are almost a 
surreal sight as they sail past dun-colored farm  fields and bare hills in the 
arid landscape of the inland Northwest.

But  sail they do, to the western edge of the Rocky Mountains, through a  
breathtakingly deep valley carved by the Snake River, to Idaho's only  seaport.

The Port of Lewiston is the inland most seaport on the  West Coast, more than 
400 miles from the Pacific Ocean. A series of dams  and locks completed on the 
Snake in 1975 allow ocean-based commerce to  be conducted here, and in two 
nearby ports in Washington state.

But  business has dropped sharply at the port, to 1970s levels, just in the  
past year, prompting longtime critics to suggest that the port - which  gets 
about 20 percent of its $2.29 million annual budget from local  property taxes - 
may not be economically viable in the future.

The  chief critics are environmental groups which have been fighting for  years 
to have the four Snake River dams breached because they contend  the structures 
have decimated wild salmon runs.

Port director  David Doeringsfeld said the number of ships calling on Portland, 
Ore. -  where cargo from Lewiston is transferred to oceangoing vessels - has  
been down the past couple of years because of the worldwide recession,  and that 
hurts his ability to ship.

"A lot of our customers have  had to truck containers to the ports of Seattle or 
Tacoma to be able to  find carriers to get to their customers overseas," 
Doeringsfeld said.

At  the same time, some of the port's traditional customers in the wood  
products and grain industries have switched to truck transport  permanently.

Currently, the biggest categories of products  shipped in containers from the 
port are paper, dried peas, lentils and  grain. And not too much of those.

The port shipped 675,000 tons  of wheat in 2007, but had shipped just 388,000 
tons by the end of  September this year. Perhaps more telling, the port shipped 
12,545  containers in 2007, but only 2,325 so far this year.

Business is  about to take another dive, as river shipping shuts down on Dec. 1 
for  three months of maintenance work on the locks.

Sam Mace of Save  Our Wild Salmon, a coalition of dozens of environmental 
groups, said the  port provides relatively few jobs, despite the enormous costs 
to the  iconic fish.

After laying off three workers last year, the port  has just seven employees, 
Doeringsfeld said, although more people work  for private businesses at the 
site.

Mace said people are starting to question long-held assumptions that the port 
makes economic sense.

The  government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in past years in  an 
effort to save salmon. That includes building giant fish ladders to  allow the 
salmon to swim up and through the dams, or using tanker trucks  to drive fish 
around the structures during their migration to the  ocean.

The spending was justified on the grounds that the port was a big economic 
engine, Mace said.

"There  is a growing recognition that it's time to do a more honest economic  
analysis of what the Snake River could provide Lewiston and Clarkston  when 
free-flowing," Mace said. Major benefits would include thriving  commercial, 
recreational and tribal fishing for salmon, which would  provide far more jobs 
and money than the Port of Lewiston, and the  nearby ports of Clarkston and 
Wilma in Washington, Mace said.

Port  supporters acknowledged the business outlook is grim in the near term.  
But the port will survive, said Jerry Klemm of Lewiston, who is head of  the 
Lewiston-Clarkston Chamber of Commerce natural resource committee,  and also a 
port commissioner.

Klemm said there was skepticism locally when the port was proposed in the 1950s.

"Now  that we have an economy, locally and regionally, that depends on river  
navigation for subsistence, it is very important to us," Klemm said.  "We'll 
make it through. It will be lean."

The survival of the  four dams is a flashpoint of Northwest politics, pitting 
environmentally  minded Democrats against business-friendly Republicans. 
President  George W. Bush declared the dams were safe under his watch. But the  
Obama administration has reopened study of the Bush plan to protect  salmon, 
raising the possibility the dams could be breached.

Threats to the dams don't sit well with business groups that have banded 
together as Northwest River Partners.

"River  transport is the 'Prius' of getting goods to market," said Terry  
Flores, director of the group in Portland. "And it keeps 700,000 trucks  off our 
highways."

Doeringsfeld predicted Lewiston's business  would rebound as more ships return 
to Portland. Using the rivers is two  to three times cheaper than shipping a 
load by truck, he said.

The  port is also seeking new business, most famously a project to accept  more 
than 200 pieces of giant oil refinery equipment made in South  Korea. The 
equipment would be shipped to Lewiston and loaded on special  transporters for 
trucking to the massive Kearl Oil Sands project in  Alberta, Canada.

The problem is that the equipment is so huge the  trucks take up both lanes of 
scenic U.S. 12 and need nine days to  travel through Idaho and Montana into 
Canada. Getting special permits  for the loads is tied up in court.

Doeringsfeld and Idaho Gov.  Butch Otter are enthusiastic supporters of the 
shipments, saying they  will generate needed business for the place Otter likes 
to call the  Idaho Seaport at Lewiston.

"These loads are coming through at a good time for us, financially speaking," 
Klemm said, if they are approved.


      
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