Tesoro employees send form letters

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In addition to taking testimony Monday on oil-related resolutions, the Vancouver City Council welcomed people who could not attend to share their thoughts via email. Councilor Jack Burkman, the first councilor to publicly oppose the Tesoro-Savage oil handling facility, noted in a May 29 email to Mayor Tim Leavitt and City Manager Eric Holmes that he’d already received more than a dozen form letters from Tesoro employees.

Here’s the form letter:

May 29, 2014

Jack Burkman
Councilmember
415 West 6th Street
2nd Floor
Vancouver, WA 98668-1995

Dear Jack Burkman:

I am writing to you as a Tesoro employee and interested citizen of Washington to express my support of the Vancouver Energy Distribution Terminal and concern about the proposed resolution opposing it.

As an employee of Tesoro I can attest to our culture of safety. We work side-by-side with Savage at our Crude Rail Offloading Facility (CROF) in Anacortes, which has operated without a spill or injury since it opened two years ago. In addition, the Tesoro terminal at the Port of Vancouver has operated for 29 years without an incident and has won the Port’s Environmental Stewardship Award. Like Tesoro, Savage (which will operate the terminal) is committed to running all of its facilities with the utmost attention to safety and the environment.

This terminal will be no different.

The proposed terminal in Vancouver will provide hundreds of well-paying jobs to area residents and millions in economic benefits not only for Vancouver, but also the State of Washington and our nation. I do of course understand the concerns associated with the project and that you as an elected official have to reflect the concerns of your constituents.

However, please also remember that this is an important step toward energy independence for America and good jobs in Vancouver. I hope you will keep an open mind before casting your vote.

Thank you for your time.

Of course, both sides use form letters. As Eric Florip reported last year, thousands of the 31,000 comments received by the state Energy Facility Siting Evaluation Council during the scoping period were identical but for the name.