Transforming the Oregon International Port of Coos Bay into the first fully ship-to-rail port facility on the West Coast is a huge opportunity for Oregon and our coastal communities.
This project will create good-paying union jobs and permanent local jobs, increase West Coast port capacity by up to 10 percent, reduce climate emissions, and strengthen our national supply chains. I’m fighting for the resources needed to make this vision a reality.
In October, Representative Val Hoyle, Senator Ron Wyden, and I successfully secured two major federal investments from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
The first investment of more than $25 million will kickstart the planning of the Pacific Coast Intermodal Port Terminal Planning Project. This funding is crucial to begin the design, permitting, and engineering needed to connect wharfs and container yards to the Port’s railways. Estimates are that, when completed, about 1.2 million containers could move through the Port of Coos Bay every year.
The second investment of more than $29 million will upgrade the Coos Bay Rail Line that connects the port to Eugene and the rest of the country’s rail network. It would also cut climate-killing emissions since using rail results in 75 percent less greenhouse gas emissions than using trucks. And it would help ease supply chain bottlenecks, which we felt acutely during the pandemic.
These investments will immediately benefit communities on Oregon’s rural South Coast and boost the economy of the entire state by creating thousands of good-paying jobs in Coos, Douglas, and Lane counties. And, long-term, these investments will increase Oregon’s shipping capacity to global markets, which is vital for our semiconductor industry, agricultural products, and other world-class goods. In fact, in March, the Port of Coos Bay signed an agreement with Taiwan’s port of Kaohsiung to collaborate and share best practices for our maritime industries.
These are exactly the kind of practical, forward-looking investments in our infrastructure, economy, and climate that Congress envisioned when we passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in 2021 – and we need these investments to continue, in Coos Bay and across the country.
We also need to make sure that continued investments in the Port of Coos Bay include our fishmen and seafood processors. More than 18 million tons of commercially caught seafood are landed at the Port of Coos Bay’s Charleston Marina, making it the third largest commercial fishing hub in Oregon. That’s why, in June, I led members of the Oregon delegation in a letter encouraging the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to partner with the West Coast seafood industry – and, in July, USDA announced $22 million to purchase Pacific Northwest and West Coast seafood products. Fishermen and seafood processors are vital to the economies and culture of our coastal communities, and efforts to expand and upgrade the Port of Coos Bay should prioritize them, too.
These are just a few of the ways I’m working to bring federal dollars back to Oregon to transform the Port of Coos Bay – and I’ll keep fighting for the funding to make the intermodal container port a reality.
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