Opposing viewpoint
Saturday, March 17, 2007 11:46 PM PDT
Larry Meyer Argus Observer
ONTARIO
The spokesman of a local citizens action committee said his group is not opposed to a venture to build a new bio-refinery in Malheur County but only worried about the plant’s proposed location.
“My main concern is that we are for the plant,” Brian Kameshige, a rural Ontario farmer said. “We’re against the location. That is our main thing — the location.”
Kameshige is the spokesman for the “Citizens Against the Location for the Ontario Ethanol Plant.”
The site chosen by TVRR is situated south of Ontario, near Railroad Avenue and Alameda Drive. The area is bordered by the Union Pacific Railroad and the Oregon Eastern Railroad. The Oregon Eastern Railroad is a shortline which operates from Eagle Picher, west of Vale, to connect with the UP line.
The “Citizens Against the Location for the Ontario Ethanol Plant,” are concerned about the potential number of trucks traveling through local neighborhoods, water issues, zoning and a potential, lingering odor from the proposed plant.
“We are so close to new housing development, just right there,” Kameshige said, pointing down Alameda Drive toward Ontario.
“And the schools are less than a mile away,” Kameshige said.
Kameshige said he was curious why TVRR did not choose areas in Malheur County already zoned industrial and ready for expansion.
“They do have industrial sites for these things there, that are available.” Kameshige said. “We don’t understand why they don’t use one of those rather than take prime farm ground and convert it into industrial sites.”
Kameshige said the citizens committee is a grass-roots effort consisting of mostly local people who would be directly affected if the plant is built.
“We are just a group of people that came together; a group of concerned citizens — we’re about traffic, worried about pollutants, air quality, water quality,” he said.
One of Kameshige traffic concerns centers on the intersection of Railroad Avenue and Oregon Highway 201. He said there has been a least one fatality in that area because no turn lane for traffic turning onto Railroad Avenue exits.
Railroad Avenue has been proposed as a major access for trucks going to and leaving the proposed plant.
Vic Easterly, a potential neighbor of the plant, said he is also concerned about the amount of traffic the bio-refinery would generate.
“That road is not made for it and the bridge is not made for it, nothing along there is made for the traffic that is going to come down that road,” he said.
Both Kameshige and Easterly said they live on Onion Avenue, about a quarter of a mile away from the proposed bio-refinery site.
TVRR project manager John Hamilton said plant developers searched for a site that could meet an array of needs. The plant needed adequate rail access to a shortline and a suitable route to the highway along with enough land to create buffers for the variety of testing TVRR plans to do. A potential site also needed, Hamilton said, access to natural gas and enough water.
“So you start doing your pluses and minuses and this site went. That is why that site was chosen,” he said.
The big drawback for the selected site is it is not zoned industrial and thus TVRR must wade through a process to have the area switched from its prime agriculture designation to industrial.
Hamilton said TVRR looked at proposals on sites in Washington County, Gem County and Canyon County in Idaho, and then started looking at places in Oregon, as far out as Eagle Picher, west of Vale.
Hamilton said most of the sites zoned industrial in the county are too small and do not have rail access, or are too big and do not have rail access.
Of two of the sites — near the size the company was looking for — he said, one is owned by the city of Vale and slated to be used for its waste water treatment lagoon expansion while the second site, near Nyssa, has numerous ownerships and gaining clear and free title to it was problematic.
Another drawback to the Nyssa site, Hamilton said, was a portion of it had been used as a city dump and TVRR would be forced to build a bridge over a gravel pit for a railroad spur line the property.
The site near Ontario on Railroad Avenue, Hamilton said, offered the best array of suitable features for TVRR.
“We know it’s an uphill battle,” Hamilton said, “We know its going to be tough getting through planning and zoning, but from our standpoint that’s the choice that makes sense for us.”
