Environmental nonprofit claims legal victory over Whatcom refinery, says it will help orca
A small environmental nonprofit says it has “scored a decisive legal victory” to help protect Southern Resident killer whales as Phillips 66 looks to expand its fossil-fuel storage facilities in Whatcom County.
According to a Friends of the San Juans news release Tuesday, March 15, the Washington State Court of Appeals on Feb. 28 upheld a previous court’s ruling regarding Phillip 66’s planned expansion of its Ferndale refinery.
Phillips 66 spokesperson Tim Johnson told The Bellingham Herald in an email that the company does not comment on ongoing litigation.
“I couldn’t be more pleased with this result,” Friends of the San Juans Executive Director R. Brent Lyles said in the release. “The fossil-fuel industry needs to understand that small environmental organizations like ours will stand up to them; big companies don’t get to ignore the rules and threaten the endangered Southern Resident orcas just because their pockets are deep.”
Phillips 66 applied for a permit in 2019 to expand its fuel storage facilities in Ferndale, according to the release, but the application did not include predictions of how many additional vessels were expected to visit the refinery because of the expansion.
Scientific research has found that increased vessel traffic in the Salish Sea increases the risks to the Southern Resident orca, and the release states that facility expansion permits are required to include predictions about how much more traffic can be expected.
Friends of the San Juans and “multiple” other community members objected to the permit, the release states, and the Friends of the San Juans took legal action to make sure the protections of the orca were upheld in Whatcom County.
“This decision reinforces permit agencies’ ability to use monitoring conditions to hold permit applicants accountable,” Friends of the San Juans Marine Protection and Policy Director Lovel Pratt said in the release.
“Phillips 66 stated that the new storage tanks would not increase vessel traffic. If the project is permitted, ongoing vessel traffic monitoring will ensure that the project does not increase vessel traffic, and that it does not increase impacts to the Southern Residents and the Salish Sea.”
Legal action has been ongoing for several years, according to the release, with Phillips 66 attorneys filing the most recent appeal.
According to the Friends of the San Juans blog on the legal action, Phillips 66 has applied to install a 300,000-barrel external floating roof crude oil storage tank and an 80,000-barrel external floating roof fuel oil storage tank at the Ferndale refinery.
The proposed project would allow Phillips 66 to keep low-sulfur fuel oil from higher-sulfur fuel oil and crude oil and manufacture low-sulfur marine fuels that would comply with regulations from the International Marine Association, which went into effect in 2020.
This story was originally published March 16, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
