In 2014, Puget Sound Energy leased a 30 acre site in the Port of Tacoma, adjacent to the Puyallup Tribe’s Reservation, to build an LNG fracked gas facility.
We are on Puyallup Land
Much of what’s known today as the Port of Tacoma sits on top of the ancestral tideflats of the Puyallup Tribe. Prior to colonization, the area was a thriving pristine estuary, with abundant marine life, wildlife, trees and plants. Much of the tideflats was filled in with contaminated soil from nearby heavy industry, and paved over in the early 1900’s, to create more “land” for Port business operations. The newly paved area meant the Tribe’s Reservation boundary no longer touched the waters of the Tideflats. This is where Puget Sound Energy built their fracked gas facility, between the Blair and Hylebos waterways.
Resistance
Puyallup Tribal Council engaged in numerous avenues of legal action including challenging permits in court, issuing formal Stop Work Requests, raising concerns with Gov Inslee at the Centennial Accords, requesting additional health and safety analysis and a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement. A movement began to grow in 2017 to support The Water Warrior Council in bringing attention to the issue and fighting to protect their people, water, and way of life. Tribal members, Indigenous activists, concerned residents, community organizations, and people from around the region showed up to Stand With Puyallup. Several years of prayer vigils, rallies, nonviolent direct actions, court cases, resolutions of opposition, petitions, educational events, public hearings and commenting at council meetings continued, even after the final permit was approved, and the decision was appealed in court.
False Promises and Loopholes
Despite bunkering being listed as a main activity in clean air agency permit documents, the health, safety and environmental impacts of bunkering were not thoroughly analyzed. Bunker barging involves ships with large fuel tanks on board that can travel to refuel LNG-powered ships in the region. In 2016, The City of Tacoma, as the lead permitting agency, promised concerned residents, “It is recognized by all parties that additional shoreline permitting, environmental assessment, public review, as well as additional review by the Coast Guard,would be required for any work not currently within the scope of the shoreline permit.”
However, these promises were broken in November of 2022, when PSE filed to amend their 2015 Shoreline Substantial Development permit to build additional vessel fueling infrastructure for bunkering. As residents prepared to mount opposition to these expansion plans, they were quickly informed by the City that because it was a permit “revision” it would NOT be subject to additional analysis or require a public comment period.
Victory and Continued Vigilence
The Puyallup Tribe and community groups represented by Earthjustice filed appeals against the City’s approval of the “permit revision”. PSE responded by pulling their permit revision application, avoiding the legal battle. The window for possible permit revisions officially ended in May of 2024. While the rare victory was celebrated, many did so cautiously, assuming that Puget Sound Energy will find a different avenue to try again at expanding operations to include bunker barging.
Deeper Learning
What is LNG? LNG is natural gas that has been cooled to –260° F, converting it from a gas into a liquid that is 1/600th of its original volume, increasing the capacity of what can be shipped and stored. It can then be used in its LNG form as maritime fuel, or can be turned back into gas for heating and powering buildings. “Natural gas” is primarily methane gas, and is a fossil fuel with a warming impact 86 times stronger than CO2 per unit of mass over a 20 year period. While it’s true that the gas is cleaner at the point of burning, methane leaks during extraction, transport, storage and use, cause the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions to be as bad or worse for the climate than coal.
LNG as a Maritime Fuel The main purpose of Puget Sound Energy’s Tacoma LNG facility is for the storage and distribution of LNG as a maritime fuel. For years TOTE Maritime has been the only official maritime customer, but their operations only use a fraction of the 8 million gallon storage tank. Permit applications for Puget Sound Clean Air Agency (PSCAA) show that almost 75% of the gas would be for maritime use, including bunker barging. Bunker barging involves ships with large fuel tanks on board that can travel to refuel LNG-powered ships in the region. LNG has been touted as a better solution than diesel fuels, but these claims have now been widely disputed, as the science behind measuring methane leaks along the supply chain have advanced. The International Council on Clean Transportation and a working group of the International Maritime Organization have concluded that “LNG is not a climate solution for shipping”.
Health & Safety Risks LNG storage and transport pose numerous serious safety risks. The superchilled liquid can cause cryogenic burns and suffocation due to lack of oxygen, in or out of water. If a storage tank is ruptured or the refrigeration fails, the liquid will warm rapidly, expanding its volume while it returns to highly flammable gas instead of liquid. Explosions, fireballs, toxic vapor clouds, and heat intense enough to melt steel, can result and impact workers and communities within several miles.
In the case of PSE’s Tacoma LNG, there are additional safety concerns due to the chosen site. The facility sits on the Cascadia earthquake fault line and a lahar lava flow zone, on soil that could be prone to liquefaction. City of Tacoma projections also estimate that the area will experience regular flooding by 2050. Puget Sound Energy has never operated this particular type of facility before and has a bad track record of fires and explosions attributed to poor maintenance of gas infrastructure.
The proximity of this facility to large populations, schools, the Puyallup Reservation, and immigrants detained in the for-profit NWDC prison create concerns of human rights violations, and environmental injustices. Health impacts can arise from the facilty’s emissions of volatile organic compounds, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and benzene. Leading to cancer, organ damage, lung disease, heart disease, early death, birth defects and other ailments.
Questionable Economics Puget Sound Energy is guaranteed a return on infrastructure development for residential customers in the state of Washington. By claiming part of the facility’s use will be for peak-shaving (supplying backup power on a few of the coldest days of the year) it is able to request a rate increase to recover part of the investment. The need for peak shaving has been questioned, the demand forecasts written by PSE. Despite unproven need and residential peak-shaving only accounting for about 2% of the lifetime use of the facility, in 2023 PSE requested residential customers to cover almost half of the construction costs! This drew widespread opposition from the public and was opposed by the Attorney General.
This abuse of rate increases to line shareholder pockets while families struggle to pay utility bills, and the violations of Indigenous sovereignty and threats to public health and safety posed by the Tacoma LNG refinery are a few of the reasons nonprofit organizations and community groups are pledging to Reject Puget Sound Energy’s Dirty Money.
