Port of Lewiston manager David Doeringsfeld explains port
operations to a group of visitors who work in the media and were
touring north central Idaho Wednesday.
Port of Lewiston manager David Doeringsfeld explains port
operations to a group of visitors who work in the media and were
touring north central Idaho Wednesday.
The Port of Lewiston anticipates barges carrying megaloads will
be arriving at its dock about three or four times a year in the
future.
"It's not going to be a constant stream of cargo coming up
here," said David Doeringsfeld, manager of the Port of
Lewiston.
The remark came while Doeringsfeld was speaking to a group of
out-of-state journalists touring north central Idaho. He was
responding to a question from Joe O'Reilly, of Inbound Logistics, a
publication based in New York City that circulates among
shippers.
The Port of Lewiston has been recruiting the new type of
business partly because until now the majority of its shipping has
been outbound agricultural commodities, along with paperboard and
pulp from Clearwater Paper.
All of the recent publicity surrounding oversized loads has put
Lewiston on the map in terms of being a place where large shipments
can be off-loaded from the water onto trucks for road journeys into
the United States and Canada, Doeringsfeld said.
Ideally, components would be added to the cargo, creating
opportunities for technicians such as welders or electricians,
Doeringsfeld said.
Exactly how many megaloads will be shipped to the Port of
Lewiston has been a key concern of opponents.
Imperial Oil originally planned to send more than 200 on U.S.
Highway 12 in a single year and were supposed to begin last
November. The rigs would be carrying Korean-made pieces of a
processing plant to be constructed at the Kearl Oil Sands in
Alberta, Canada.
So far, only one test module has gone because the oil company
hasn't been able to secure permits for the loads to move through
Idaho or Montana on U.S. 12. Many of them have bypassed the port
altogether, and the ones that arrived last fall were shortened so
they could use Interstate 90 via U.S Highway 95.
Opponents allege the improvements Imperial Oil made in Idaho and
wants to make in Montana on the route will pave the way for
hundreds of other shipments that take up two lanes of traffic.
Doeringsfeld was one of about a dozen people in Lewiston who
made presentations to the group. The visit was sponsored by the
Idaho Department of Commerce and consisted of writers who work for
travel and outdoor publications.
The visits in northern Idaho cost the state about $4,000, but
the state anticipates getting about $24,000 in free publicity from
articles the writers will submit for publications, said Bibiana
Nertney, a spokeswoman for the department.
The writers paid for their accommodations and transportation to
Idaho. The state covered some of their other expenses, such as
rental of a van to transport them, Nertney said.
The group got a glimpse into a number of industries including
agriculture, boat building and ammunition making. Arvid Lyons,
manager of the Lewis-Clark Grain Terminal, said his employer has a
grain pile in Clarkston after filling its 51/2 million bushel
storage facilities.
Soft white wheat is going for about $7 a bushel, as much as $2
more per bushel than last year, but farmers did well enough in 2010
that many of them probably still have money in the bank and are not
extremely eager to sell, Lyons said.
The issues facing boat builders are different. Custom Weld saw
its payroll grow to 100 people in 2007 before the economy tanked.
It still has 40 people, but it's made a lot of adjustments.
All of its suppliers are trying to keep inventories low to keep
costs down, so a component that previously would have taken three
days to get now could be three months out, said Spike Kennedy,
production manager of Custom Weld.
Just down the road from Custom Weld, ATK, the largest maker of
military ammunition in the world, is thriving, employing 1,093 at
its Lewiston sites, said Dustin Campbell, continuous improvement
manager.
