For years the fossil fuel industry has set its sights on Port Westward, just outside Clatskanie, Oregon, where there is a small industrial park along the Columbia Estuary. Port Westward has very little industrial development on what is primarily highly productive agricultural land. But NXT Energy, a Houston fossil fuel company, wants to build one of the West Coast's largest so-called "renewable" diesel refineries there. The project has the support of the chamber of commerce but most of the rest of the community has been fighting this project since its inception. Recently the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality granted NXT a Clean Water Act Section 401 Water Quality Permit, which is being appealed.
On this episode of Locus Focus we talk with Columbia Riverkeeper staff attorney Audrey Leonard about the latest developments in the struggle to stop NXT at Port Westward.