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Environmental activists are voicing concerns about a proposed methanol production plant at the Port of Tacoma, saying the plant’s potential wastewater and chemical pollutants could harm the region’s air quality and impact an already fragile Puget Sound.

The groups say they’re particularly troubled by the veil of secrecy that appears to surround the Tacoma plant project, one of three methanol plants proposed for port cities in the Pacific Northwest. They’re also concerned about its size: If built, the advocacy groups say the $3.4 billion Tacoma facility would be the largest methanol production plant in the world.

“We’re kind of in a pickle because the project backers have declined to say anything substantive about it, so we really can’t draw (environmental impact) conclusions,” said Eric de Place, policy director at the Sightline Institute, a Seattle-based environmental think tank taking a close look at the project.

“We don’t really know the core features of the project,” he added. “We’re being asked to believe they have this unicorn that’s never been seen before, and it’s hard to swallow. We need a lot more information. It’s a huge petrochemical facility on Puget Sound, and project directors have shared so little.”

But officials with the Port of Tacoma and the spokeswoman for the company proposing the plant all say the environmental review process is just getting underway and that there will be ample opportunity in the months ahead for more substantive review. The state named the city of Tacoma as the lead agency for the environmental and permitting process in October. The city launched a 60-day environmental scoping period on Dec. 15 aimed at narrowing the scope of the required Environmental Impact Study (EIS). The Tacoma News Tribune reports that the EIS is expected to be drafted by a city consultant as early as the summer of 2016. It will explore concerns brought to light during the ongoing scoping period as well as contain information about the plant’s environmental impacts, economic impacts and human health concerns.

The draft EIS expected this summer will be put out for public comment, and the building company will have to address any concerns brought up in the study, including how they will be alleviated or resolved. The Tacoma News Tribune reports that once the city considers public comments and the company revises plans to address concerns, the city will file a final EIS with the Department of Ecology. The final EIS has to be submitted before permits can be issued.

At the Port of Tacoma, Senior Project Manager Tony Warfield said the lease signing for the plant and the ongoing environmental scoping project is “just the beginning” of the long process mentioned above and that the plant’s plans may change as the process goes on. He said the port’s leases have a feasibility period that require permits and environmental studies to be done before building.

“That’s just the law,” Warfield said. “For any of our leases to work, you have to go through environmental and permitting processes. If anything during that process is found to not be feasible, the plans can change.”

Northwest Innovation Works (NWIW), the company proposing the methanol plant, signed a lease with the Port of Tacoma in spring of 2014. The firm is backed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a Hong Kong-based investment group. It hopes to build the plant at the former Kaiser aluminum smelter site, which has stood vacant for the past 12 years.

The plant is also expected to bring hundreds of permanent jobs to the area. NWIW’s website states that the Tacoma plant would create up to 1,000 jobs at the peak of construction. Once operational, the facility would employ roughly 260 full-time managers and workers. NWIW is hoping to begin construction in Tacoma as early as 2017 to have the plant operational by 2020.

The Tacoma plant is slated to join two other methanol production plants in Kalama, Washington, and Clatskanie, Oregon. By using natural gas, all three plants are being touted as a low-emission and environmentally-sustainable way to produce methanol. The colorless and flammable liquid is used as a feedstock for olafin, which is the base for much of China’s manufacturing economy and is necessary to make plastic goods from keyboards and cell phones to contact lenses and carpet fibers. The Pacific Northwest plants would be supplied with natural gas by underground pipelines and, through a series of chemical reactions, the gas would be converted to methanol. That methanol would then be loaded onto tanker ships and transported to China.

China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of methanol and currently produces methanol from coal. With plants in the Pacific Northwest and others along America’s shoreline, companies like NWIW hope that cleaner-burning natural gas and relative abundance of water when compared to China will yield a cleaner, cheaper methanol for use in China. The plants have the support of Washington Governor Jay Inslee. A Tacoma News Tribune article reports Inslee voiced his support in August 2015, calling the plants a “boost to the state’s clean energy future.”

NWIW has also said that the Tacoma plant will contain ultra-low emissions (ULE) technology that will further reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The technology reportedly will reduce emissions by using Tacoma’s electrical grid instead of burning natural gas to fuel the chemical reactions.

Charla Skaggs, NWIW’s spokeswoman, said the proposed plants are a far more environmentally sustainable production process for methanol than China’s coal-based plants. She said China’s olafin demand is expected to double in the next eight years, which also means a need for more methanol. She also said that the plants were proposed for the Pacific Northwest because the ports and shipping infrastructure already exist and the necessary natural resources are nearby.

“We have the natural gas, water and electricity,” Skaggs said. “We have the available resources and the high environmental standards for the clean manufacturing. In China, the natural resources needed are in areas that are far away from the port cities on the coast.”

However, environmental groups such as Seattle’s Sightline Institute and Tacoma’s Citizens for a Healthy Bay (CHB) are skeptical, especially when it comes to the plant’s water requirements. The estimated 125-acre Tacoma facility is expected to produce 20,000 metric tons of methanol per day by using 10.4 million gallons of water per day (5.9 billion gallons per year). Tacoma Water reports that Tacoma’s total water use is around the same amount every year (5.87 billion gallons annually): The plant could double the city’s water use.

CHB officials have taken on the plant proposal and written a report outlining the plant’s potentials effects. Among one of the largest concerns is that the plant’s water use could threaten the Green River, which is a water source that the orca population’s food — Chinook salmon — rely on.

The CHB report also shows other environmental concerns and specifies that volatile organic compounds like benzene and formaldehyde (known cancer-causing agents), fine particulates and the known respiratory irritant sulfur dioxide could be among chemicals released into the air around Tacoma. A study posted on their website by Research Assistant Ryan Cruz reports that pollutants from the combustion of natural gas can also include carbon monoxide and methane. However, the exact amounts and concentrations of those chemicals that might be emitted are not known. Cruz said the concentrations of such chemicals is the important part because the human body can handle the chemicals in low concentrations.

CHB Director Melissa Malott said that her agency’s concerns are compounded by what they say is a lack of transparency and information from NWIW.

Mallot said that she and her staff met with NWIW twice and were told that the company did not have answers to their questions. She said the company appears to be “flying by the seat of its pants with its plans.”

“They have all these new technologies and this huge plant that is unrivaled in size, and we haven’t seen the numbers for the low emission technology,” Malott said last week. “When they first talk about it, it sounds really great, and I think that’s why the governor jumped behind it. But the plans have changed a lot, and I think everyone thinks (NWIW) has been confusing in their communications.”

NWIW’s Skaggs said that the low-emission technology indeed has never been used at a plant of this size, but that there has been extensive research, and the technology’s creators have been working with NWIW to “make sure the infrastructure will work.” The technology has been in use at a small Melbourne, Australia methanol production plant since 1994. The Melbourne plant produces nearly 1.8 million metric tons of methanol per year, while the Tacoma plant is set to produce 7.3 million metric tons annually.

She also said the company has been trying to respond to the community’s concerns, but that it’s difficult because the process has just begun and the numbers are still changing.

“One thing we said early on is that it’s so early in the process, and we’re giving very conservative numbers,” Skaggs said. “(We) are hesitant to go out with what we know are very preliminary numbers, but we don’t have a lot of the estimates (the community) is asking for. The Kalama plant is further ahead in the process, and it was through that that we were able to give more firm numbers.”

As far as the plant’s water use, Skaggs said that the company has been in discussions with Tacoma about the potential water source and the feasibility of using the city’s wastewater to power the plant.

“Could Tacoma’s wastewater be ours? Possibly, but it takes time to get those answers,” Skaggs said. “We need to figure out the feasibility of all of this.”

Word of the plant began spreading on Vashon last week as the Backbone Campaign’s Bill Moyer started investigating it. Moyer said that he is still researching the plans, but hopes to “delve into the campaign” against the plant and is tired of Washington’s infrastructure being used to support fossil fuels.

“My sense is that Backbone will at least work to support those who are opposing it by providing tactical tools and training,” Moyer said. “Due to the water issues, potential community safety impacts and the supply chain link to fracked (natural gas), it is highly likely that we (will) go beyond mere support and delve into the campaign as an organization.”

Other islanders have begun circulating an online petition to stop the project; local farmer Tom Conway is one of more than 3,000 Pacific Northwest residents who have signed it. He said he is worried about the plant’s “ravenous appetite for natural resources.”

“Natural gas will be piped in from Canada; tankers will transport 22,000 tons of methanol on Puget Sound, and 1.44 million gallons per day of treated wastewater will be discharged to the city of Tacoma’s wastewater treatment plants,” Conway said. “It’s like the environmental poster child of what not to propose and build.”

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