Officials on the southern Oregon Coast want to boost shipping and commerce at the Port of Coos Bay. As the only shipping facility between San Francisco and Portland, efforts are underway to expand its capacity and create what’s called the Pacific Coast Intermodal Port.
The Coos Bay/North Bend area has roughly 32,000 residents, and hundreds of acres zoned for industrial development. A public-private partnership between port officials and NorthPoint Development aims to create an intermodal facility that would cost roughly $1.8 billion dollars.
“Our primary role is to facilitate and encourage economic development here in the region and for the state,” said Margaret Barber, Director of External Affairs and Business Development for the Port of Coos Bay. .
Barber said one asset they control is the Coos Bay rail line, which they’re hoping to upgrade with $700 million from the U.S. Transportation Department’s Mega Grant program. While the Port of Coos Bay was not chosen as a recipient in the previous round of Mega Grants last year, Barber said there’s already $35 million from the State of Oregon, a BUILD grant, and a Port Infrastructure and Development program.
“We've got nine tunnels along our rail lines. So we'll be making those taller essentially, or dropping it down one way or the other, so that it can accommodate double-stack traffic because that's primarily how containers are moved now,” explained Barber. “So we're looking at—when this is fully up and running—moving about 1.2 million containers through the Port of Coos Bay every year.”
The Coos Bay Rail Line runs 134 miles and links the port with the national rail network in Eugene.
Barber said moving product by rail is more eco-friendly than by semi-truck, which she said amounts to 75% fewer greenhouse gas emissions. She added there’s plans to use an improved rail system for more than international goods shipped from overseas.
“The idea would be that we can capture a lot of export traffic as well," she said. "Whether it's agricultural products from the Midwest, or Oregon even, and move stuff back that way.”
Upgraded rail and port facilities are expected to help Coos Bay and North Bend rebound from several recent setbacks. In 2019, the Georgia Pacific Mill shut down, while last year the Shutter Creek Correctional Institution also closed. Altogether, that came to 220 jobs. The loss of those jobs has created more urgency for the plans to upgrade the port, and that’s sparked attention from some politicians.
“I would love to talk more about the Port of Coos Bay,” said Val Hoyle, the Democratic Representative for Oregon’s 4th Congressional District, on a recent edition of KLCC's Oregon Rainmakers podcast.
A member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Hoyle said the Port of Coos Bay is her top transportation priority, and she’s looking to have the channel dredged to a depth of 45 feet and a width of 450 feet, to enable full-size container ships.
“With that, we will be able to reduce the supply chain congestion on the west by 10 to 12%," said Hoyle. "And it will create both directly—and with ancillary services—about 9,000 jobs between Coos, Douglas, and Lane County.”
Among those also hoping for an improved facility is Lori Steele, executive director of the West Coast Seafood Processors Association. With the seafood industry still recuperating from the COVID-19 pandemic, and the loss of its Ukraine market, Steele told KLCC that this push is good news for processors and suppliers.
“The Port of Coos Bay is really our largest international port and terminal,” said Steele. “And they are not only making efforts to make expansions and grow as an international shipping terminal, but they're also making significant investments in the future of their fishing and seafood industry down there.”
Not that there aren’t still undercurrents of dissent. The Biden Administration and environmentalists are eying the southern Oregon coast for wind turbine developments. That’s caused concern for fishermen and other environmentalists, who see the possibility as detrimental.
Hoyle is hoping all these competing interests can be worked out.
“We feed the world out of the south coast," she said. "And we want to make sure we allow people to fish, we allow whale migration to be not affected, and that we also move to a green energy source right there in the California current where there’s a lot of fish and there’s a lot of wind.”
Proponents say if the rail line, navigation channel, and container terminal all come together, the Pacific Coast Intermodal Port will generate 3,500 construction jobs over a five-year period, and run 12 trains a day between the Coos Bay area and Eugene.
©2023, KLCC.
