EFSEC sifting through comments on proposed oil terminal

It will be weeks yet before the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council gets through the 250,000 comments it received on the oil terminal proposed for the Port of Vancouver.

More than two months after the public comment period closed on the project’s draft environmental impact statement, project manager Sonia Bumpus told the council Friday there is still a ways to go cataloging and compiling the quarter-million comments.

“Several topics have been raised for us to discuss, and we’ve had several preliminary discussions with our consultants and will continue to do so,” she told the council at its monthly meeting.

The environmental impact statement was issued in November and drew an unprecedented number of comments in writing and in person during hearings.

The council is finalizing the environmental impact statement by incorporating the comments, which will at some point be made publicly available.

Officials at the meeting said the separate permitting process for the project is “moving right along.”

The council also is holding courtlike hearings on the terminal this summer. Following the five-week adjudication, the council will convene to make a recommendation on the project’s approval to Gov. Jay Inslee, who has final say over the project.

Vancouver Energy, a joint venture between Tesoro Corp. and Savage Cos., first proposed the project in 2013. The rail-to-marine terminal would be the nation’s largest and handle 360,000 barrels of oil per day.