A subsidiary of Canadian export company Canpotex is moving
forward plans to build a new storage facility at the Port of Portland’s
Terminal 5 to house fertilizer component potash.
Canpotex subsidiary Portland Bulk Terminals filed a permit
with the city of Portland in January for preliminary work related to the
building of a new storage facility on the 100-acre site it leases from the port’s
Terminal 5.
Portland Bulk Terminals’ permit application asks that before
it proceeds with building a new storage facility, it be allowed to prep the
site through the compacting of ground soil with tons of sand and small
aggregates.
The application is for the construction of a temporary
conveyor system to transport that material 800 feet from a barge in the
Willamette River to a stockpile location where it will be moved to a proposed
building site.
Portland Bulk currently maintains a 2,000-foot-long storage
building at the terminal. The size and cost of the potential new storage
facility have yet to be outlined.
The port says it has received no official expansion proposal
from Portland Bulk, but the idea of the company growing its operations is not a
new one: in 2010, the port released a marine operations plan that suggested
that the storage capacity at Portland Bulk Terminals could be doubled at some
point.
