Cantwell Celebrates Port of Grays Harbor Terminal 4 Grand Opening

Cantwell Celebrates Port of Grays Harbor Terminal 4 Grand Opening

"This is what America gets and American workers get when you make port infrastructure investment," says Cantwell; Cantwell led the fight to secure a historic $2.25B for Port Infrastructure Development Program (PIDP) in 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law; Terminal 4 project made possible by $25.5M PIDP grant; Grays Harbor is the largest U.S. exporter of soymeal, & 47,000 new feet of rail line allows the port to ship more product faster

GRAYS HARBOR, WA - Today, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and senior member of the Senate Finance Committee, joined local union leaders, businesspeople, and elected officials to celebrate the grand opening of the Port of Grays Harbor's Terminal 4.

"ILWU 24 workers are making sure that a soybean farmer 1,000 miles away in South Dakota can compete with Asia, and that is what we're doing here today," said Sen. Cantwell. "This $25.5 million dollar investment that helps this project is going to attract over $100 million in private sector development, and that is why you put federal dollars on the table, and that's what you sent me to Washington to do."

Sen. Cantwell added: "We are now working hard to pass another infrastructure investment bill, because we have to continue to make port infrastructure investment. And I'm going to use this project to tell all my colleagues on both sides of the aisle: 'This is what America gets and American workers get when you make port infrastructure investment.'"

The Port of Grays Harbor is the state's largest commercial seafood landing port. It's the largest exporter of soymeal on the West Coast, with product coming from states like South Dakota and Nebraska, and last year it handled a record number of automobiles. The Terminal 4 expansion more than doubles the rail infrastructure at the port to 90,000 feet, allowing ships to be loaded almost twice as fast, and speed soymeal grown across the United States to customers in Asia.

The new Terminal 4 was made possible by $100 million of private investment, plus a $25.5 million federal investment from the Cantwell-championed Port Infrastructure Development Program (PIDP), which is administered by the U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD).

Sen. Cantwell is a champion of the PIDP grant program. In addition to supporting reauthorizing the program annually, in 2023 Cantwell expanded program eligibility to include seafood-related port infrastructure such as cold storage, and dockside infrastructure needed to support seafood landings and processing in Washington. Sixty percent of Washington's $60 billion dollar maritime economy is connected to seafood. In 2021, as chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, Sen. Cantwell worked to include a record $2.25 billion for the program in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act.

Video of today's entire press conference is HERE; video of Sen. Cantwell's opening statement is HERE; photos are HERE; and a transcript of Sen. Cantwell's remarks is HERE.