June 2016
Volume 15 • Issue 6
Agriculture
Fields of Grace volunteers help feed community Pages 21
Real Estate & Construction
Northwest Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine builds new home Pages 29
Business Management
LINK provides unique opportunities pages 45
he Said It “The site is projected to attract $500 million in private investment at full build-out.” - Tim Arntzen, CEO for the Port of Kennewick speaking about the redevelopment of Vista Field page 35
Kennewick company to create new source of green energy By Jessica Hoefer for TCAJOB When it comes to hydroelectric power, most people think of a mighty river and a massive dam. Electricity is generated when the build up of water is released from the reservoir. The energy of water falling over the dam is then converted into electric energy through a turbine. There are about 2,500 hydroelectric plants in the United States, and most have elevation drops where the water falls from 50 to more than 300 feet. But Jerry Straalsund, president of Percheron Power in Kennewick, set his company’s sights on something smaller. “There are a lot of places where there’s small drops of less than 30 feet. You have to handle of lot of water to get power, but we were interested in finding the best technologies to make these smaller projects viable. Irrigation canals are usually pretty flat for a while. They are designed so that the water doesn’t flow too fast. Then there will be engineered drops often to 30 feet or so to accommodate the terrain change, and that’s what we’re looking at,” Straalsund said. In order to be successful at harnessing power from small drops, Straalsund and his team needed to improve on the Archimedes Hydrodynamic Screw Turbine already being used in Europe. While efficient at collecting energy from areas like canals, the European technology is expensive, especially if it needs to be shipped to the United States. Percheron Power came up with a solution to make the turbines out of composite material instead of metal, and reached out to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and its Technology Assistance Program. For more than two decades, PNNL has offered qualifying companies support with about a staff-week worth of technological assistance. Since the program’s inception, Gary Spanner, PNNL’s manager of economic development, said PNNL has helped with more than 1,300 projects. “We’ve done projects such as energybalance calculations, biofuels process development and a lot of materials characterization,” Spanner said. “For Percheron, we developed some prototype turbine blades.” uPOWER, Page 53
Scott Keller, the Port of Benton’s executive director, has floor-to-ceiling windows that look out to the Columbia River and give him a view of the Port’s USS Triton Sail Park.
An office with a view
By Mary Coffman Like jobs, not all work spaces are created equal. Some offices are bland, boring and bound to stifle creativity. Some companies, like Google and Facebook, create lively, bright, exciting open work spaces with couches, comfy oversized chairs and modern furniture. They offer employees options on where and how they want to spend their work day — from a quiet corner nook, to working from a couch in a living room setting. Those metropolitan work spaces also offer views of the city from the top floors of skyscrapers. As the area has grown, most of the commercial and office space has developed in a sprawling manner, rather than upward. But what the Tri-Cities lacks in skyscrapers, it makes up for in the views available.
Just ask Scott Keller, executive director of the Port of Benton. Keller’s previous office was spacious, but it certainly did not offer the view he has now. Previously the Port of Benton’s executive offices were in an aging building on George Washington Way. But in 2013, the Port of Benton bought a 24,000 sq.-ft. riverfront building that had been the former Richland headquarters of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). “We had been thinking about building an office down by the river, but the estimate for that was about $4 million for a 10,000 sq.-ft. building,” Keller said. The Port negotiated with SAIC and was able to purchase its building for $950,000. They renovated and remodeled the building and lease about 10,000 sq.-ft. to tenants. uOFFICES, Page 46
BNSF builds $26 million coal dust suppression facility in Pasco By Jeff Morrow for TCAJOB If the Millenium Bulk Terminal—a proposed facility in Longview—ever gets built, the BNSF Railway company will be ready to go. Millenium is pushing to build a $680 million terminal to help transport coal to Asia. The proposed project is undergoing a staterequired environmental impact study, which includes a public comment period with Cowlitz County and the Washington State Department of Ecology. The plan calls for up to eight trains a day carrying coal from mines in Montana and Wyoming that travel to the terminal. Those trains would pass through the TriCities on their way to Longview and could have environmental impacts on the area. Opponents, many from western
Washington, are concerned about coal dust, the effects it would have on the health of Washington residents, and problems with climate change. This is where BNSF Railway steps in. The company built a $26 million highspeed coal dust suppression re-spray facility in 2015 in the Pasco hump yard in anticipation the Millenium project will eventually be approved. The BNSF Pasco yard in Pasco, where train cars are transferred for their future destination, employs about 250 people. Since Jan. 27, 2015, when the first train was sprayed, almost 1,000 trains have gone through the Pasco facility on their way to Vancouver, British Columbia. uBNSF, Page 11
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