Methanol plant: Not in Tacoma, not anywhere

Citizens of Tacoma rightly rose up to defeat the methanol refinery proposed for Tacoma a few years ago.

Now the same company, Northwest Innovation Works, owned by the government of China, wants to construct a huge methanol plant on the banks of the Columbia River in the small town of Kalama.

The plant would depend on vast supplies of fracked gas. This process uses chemicals and explosions to extract methane from rock formations deep in the earth.

The extraction process contaminates huge quantities of water and has been known to cause earthquakes.

The fracked gas would then be transported through new pipelines to the Port of Kalama. Pipelines leak, and when they do, they send a greenhouse gas 86 times more potent than CO2 into the atmosphere.

There is nothing “clean” or “natural” about fracked gas. Ask Gov. Jay Inslee to take a position strongly opposing the Kalama methanol refinery.