Purpose and Need
The purposes of the proposed Federal action are to:
- Respond to growing needs for capacity for large container vessels at ports on the West Coast of the US;
- Provide economic benefits to the national economy by accommodating large container vessels, thereby reducing costs of transporting goods among Pacific Rim countries and maintaining US competitiveness in the global marketplace;
- Improve security for international movement of goods by developing an additional facility for large container vessels in a new location on the US West Coast;
- Improve safety and efficiency of navigation in the Coos Bay Navigational Channel by providing a larger area for vessel handling and maneuvering; and
- Have a net beneficial effect on the estuarine ecosystem in the vicinity of Coos Bay.
The project is needed to accommodate large container vessels, which are used by Pacific Rim shippers transporting a wide variety of consumer goods, as well as import production commodities for manufacturing firms and U.S. produced goods for export. The volume of container traffic has increased significantly during the past ten years, and growth is expected to remain strong. Ocean carriers are responding to the growth opportunities by using larger and larger vessels. Currently, the average vessel calling at US West Coast ports carries 6,500 TEUs (20-foot equivalent units), but vessels capable of carrying 12,000 TEUs are becoming more common. The larger vessels can transport containers more efficiently and at lower costs than smaller vessels. For navigation safety, a navigational channel should be at least 10 percent deeper than the draft of the largest vessels that utilize the channel, as well as wide enough to allow safe vessel maneuvering. Existing Coos Bay port facilities are not accessible to many larger ships because of depth and width limitations in the navigational channel.
In addition to deep-draft ports, large container vessels require ports with terminals that are large enough to accommodate the containers once they are off-loaded, and that are connected to the railway system to move the containers on land. Currently, only five ports on the US west coast (Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland, California, and Tacoma and Seattle, Washington) can accommodate these large container vessels, and additional capacity is needed. Container vessel traffic will likely exceed the capacity of existing terminals by 2015, if not sooner. In addition, should one of the existing deep-draft ports be significantly damaged (for example, by a natural disaster), it could have a major impact on the national economy. Coos Bay is geographically separated from the other deep-draft ports and, therefore, would be unlikely to be damaged by the same event affecting another major West Coast port.
Past development and resource extraction within and near Coos Bay have negatively affected the local ecosystem. Impacts have included habitat degradation and loss, declines in fish and wildlife populations, spread of invasive species, and worsened water quality, among others. Ecosystem restoration is needed to offset the effects of the proposed channel modifications and development, as well as some of the effects of past actions.