If the recent meeting between Vancouver city officials, representatives of the Port of Vancouver and the world’s largest mining company was any indication, then the building of a new export operation — and at least 60 jobs to go with it — is all but a certainty.
“We have a process and a procedure to get you through to approval,” Jon Wagner, senior planner for the city, told the roomful of people gathered to review the development standards BHP Billiton must comply with to win a building permit from the city.
The company wants to use port-owned land to build an export center for potash, a natural mineral fertilizer that improves crop yields.
Though Wagner indicated the project will move forward to completion, that doesn’t mean it will be easy. Plus, the public will get to weigh in on the environmental impacts of what amounts to another move by the port to spur economic growth in the region.
No public hearings have been set. No decisions have been made. Nevertheless, BHP Billiton must obtain a shoreline conditional use permit, which is required because the Australian miner plans construction near the Columbia River. And that means the company must eventually go before the city’s hearings examiner in a public hearing.
What BHP Billiton is proposing is complex. Its facility would be built on roughly 60 acres of the port’s 218-acre Terminal 5. The facility would include handling, storage, dock and rail operations. BHP would ship potash by rail to the port, where it would then be loaded onto ships bound primarily for Asia. The company would haul the potash from a mine it’s developing in Canada’s Saskatchewan Basin.
The cost of the project is unclear. Negotiations concerning a long-term lease are still under way between the port and BHP. Documents filed with the city as part of the pre-application process say the project could create 60 full-time jobs, although port officials have said the number likely will be higher because of the eventual addition of other jobs associated with operation of the export facility.
If all goes as planned, construction of the export center would occur over 2½ years, beginning in September 2012 and finishing in April 2015, after which it would begin operation.
The storage structure for the potash would be designed to allow for future expansions, so that it may eventually make room to handle 8 million metric tons per year. At that point the facility would be roughly 487,000 square feet. (By comparison, a supermarket may be 100,000 square feet.) Port officials said the scope of the project with BHP is bigger than anything the port has done previously.
The battery of city regulations BHP must comply with include:
• Implementing a wastewater treatment plan that accounts for the fact that wastewater discharged by BHP’s operation will contain diluted potassium chloride, which, while “by itself is nontoxic to aquatic organisms,” does add to the “total dissolved solids” that are received and processed at the city’s wastewater treatment facilities, according to pre-application documents. “The city will not allow spilled or unusually large quantities of (diluted potassium chloride) to be discharged to sewer.”
• Adopting a stormwater plan that makes sure “sediment and sediment-laden runoff does not leave the site” and adopting an erosion-control plan to protect the Columbia River bank.
Fire safety prompted one of the lengthier conversations during Thursday’s preliminary meeting. Paul Norlander, senior project manager for WorleyParsons, a global engineering firm heading up the design and engineering of BHP’s proposed export facility, expressed concern that potash could be damaged in a false alarm or if the correct fire-safety controls aren’t deployed. “Water and potash don’t go well together,” Norlander said.
John Gentry of the Vancouver Fire Department said there is technology that will trigger sprinklers only when an actual fire is detected. “It’s going to be an interesting discussion,” Gentry said. “I think we can get there.”
Aaron Corvin: 360-735-4518; aaron.corvin@columbian.com.
