A host of environmental groups are challenging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’s decision to grant a Clean Water Act permit for a marine terminal as part of a proposed methanol production facility in Washington.
Northwest Innovation Works, a company majority owned by the Chinese government, is seeking to build a methanol manufacturing and shipping terminal on the banks of the Columbia River in Kalama, according to the complaint. A refinery will convert fracked gas to methanol, and a marine export terminal will load the methanol onto ships bound for China.
It would be one of the largest methanol...