Port Westward Is Not An Empty Industrial Pad. It's A Working Floodplain And Habitat Complex.

The current Draft EIS comment period is important, but it is not the beginning of the story. The Corps' May 13, 2022 notice says the project had already been under public notice since November 5, 2021 and that the agency had already determined an Environmental Impact Statement was necessary because the project may significantly affect the quality of the human environment.

That matters because the present review sits on top of years of earlier permitting conflict, not a sudden 2026 surprise.

NOAA says the project area sits on the Columbia River floodplain, converted to uplands by levees. It also says about 10,000 linear feet of waterways run through the area under the Beaver Drainage Improvement Company, draining floodwater and supplying irrigation water to farms through McLean Slough and Beaver Slough before discharging near the Clatskanie River.

That matters because the landscape is already doing work. It is part drainage system, part farm-support system, part wetland network, and part river-connected habitat.

DEQ's January 7, 2025 certification says the project is located in wetlands and waters that discharge to McLean Slough, a tributary to the Clatskanie River. DEQ also says the Clatskanie River to its confluence with the Columbia is listed as impaired for dissolved oxygen, and that the Columbia reach between Mill Creek and Wallace Slough is limited or impaired for temperature, dioxin, total dissolved gas, PCBs, and DDE.

That matters because this is not a case where the public record describes pristine receiving waters with no cumulative burden. The state is already tracking multiple water quality problems there.

NOAA's biological opinion says the action is likely to adversely affect 23 ESA-listed species or DPSs, including multiple Chinook runs, Lower Columbia River coho, Columbia River chum, multiple steelhead populations, green sturgeon, eulachon, leatherback sea turtles, Southern Resident killer whales, and several whale species. NOAA also says the action would adversely affect essential fish habitat for Pacific Coast salmon and groundfish.

The same opinion explains why the estuary matters: juvenile salmon and steelhead historically used low-velocity marshland and tidal channel habitats, and diking and filling have already eliminated emergent and forested wetlands and floodplain habitats, reducing the estuary's salmon-rearing capacity.

DEQ says the project would create about 72.6 acres of new impervious surface on a 122.5-acre site. The certification and Corps documents also describe major fill, pipelines, tanks, rail infrastructure, stormwater systems, and thousands of deep piles.

That matters because the ecological question is not only what gets filled directly. It is also what happens when a floodplain landscape gets harder, more industrial, and more dependent on detention ponds, ditches, and treatment controls to keep pollutants out of already stressed waters.

DEQ says NEXT's mitigation plan would enhance 476.60 acres by re-establishing a native shrub and bottomland emergent wetland community, removing noxious and non-native plants, taking out a poplar plantation, and creating shallow water areas and channels. USACE separately describes a 466.10-acre enhancement concept in the federal record.

That matters because the project is not being evaluated as impact-free. It is being evaluated as a project with very large direct impacts that would have to be offset through a substantial wetland restoration effort nearby.

The strongest way to cover Port Westward is not to ask whether a refinery belongs on some abstract industrial map. It is to ask what kind of landscape the official record says is already there: leveed floodplain, irrigation and drainage infrastructure, wetlands, sloughs, riparian corridors, fish habitat, and working farmland.

That is why this is not just an energy story. It is a floodplain, habitat, and rural-landscape story at the same time.