Shining silos ready to support farmers, local grain industry in Chehalis
A bit of "seed money," as state Rep. Ed Orcutt, R-Kalama, called it, along with years of effort, has sprouted and borne fruit in the form of the Southwest Washington Grain Project at the Port of Chehalis.
"It was a really, really good investment, seed money, I guess you could say," Orcutt said during a ribbon-cutting event on Wednesday, June 17. "What it's going to do is provide an opportunity for you to get product out in a more efficient manner."
Orcutt and local, state and federal officials, farmers and Port of Chehalis staff gathered beside three brand new, hulking grain silos this week to celebrate the completion of the Southwest Washington Grain Project.
Locals hope the new facility, which sits along a relatively new rail spur, will be a lifeline for local farmers in the years to come as it supports a fledgling grain economy.
Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Skamania, spoke of the project as a worthwhile investment in the farming industry in Southwest Washington. She briefly recalled being introduced to the project early in her congressional career by one of the originators of the plan.
"I was fresh off the shop floor when I first met Dave Fenn and Lindsey Senter, and while they didn't know me, I felt like I knew them," Gluesenkamp Perez said. "I did not expect to be a member of Congress, and I get here, and I show up, and I find good people doing the long work of making sure that there is a real viability, that there is pride and agency."
The new facility, which was constructed by the Port of Chehalis, now offers storage for up to 12,000 bushels of grain. It can also be used as a transload facility, which means it can load stored grain or transfer grain between trucks and trains. According to the Port of Chehalis, it can transload as many as 7,500 bushels of grain in an hour.
The Southwest Washington Growers Cooperative will operate the new facility in cooperation with farmers in the area. According to Growers Co-Op General Manager Jake Fay, and many others, the facility will allow local farmers to profit on a relatively new, and still small, grain economy.
"Regional farmers can now aggregate their product, load directly to rail and capitalize on contractual opportunities for their crops," Fay said.
Speaking ahead of the ribbon cutting, Northwest Agriculture Business Center(NABC) Executive Director Mike Peroni linked the origins of the new facility to a study dating back more than 20 years. According to Peroni, a 2012 market analysis presented a grim future for agriculture in Southwest Washington thanks to dwindling processing facilities, frequent flooding and an unstable market.
"That was really a banner that we carried early on," he said.
What followed was advocacy from local farmers, including Fenn, Jay Gordon and Dennis Styger, tours of other agriculture supporting port districts, and studies of the grain selling and buying markets in the area.
As Peroni and many others said Wednesday evening, Fenn and other farmers were instrumental in bringing the project to fruition. They continued to follow up on a belief that the region could support a grain economy if it could develop a grain storage and transloading facility such as the one just completed.
Peroni described the commitment by those original supporters and many others along the way as "fire in the belly."
The project showed its first real signs of life in 2019 after receiving its first cash infusion from the Lewis County .09 Distressed County Fund to the tune of $800,000, according to the Port of Chehalis. Peroni recalls going into a meeting with the funding board and being asked to manage his expectations for funding.
To his surprise, the project received twice what they requested.
"I cannot express enough what a confidence builder things like that were early on," Peroni said.
The money paid for a new rail spur to be constructed, attaching the Port of Chehalis property along Maurin Road to the nearby rail line. It's the same rail spur that now serves the massive grain silos on Port of Chehalis property. It also allowed farmers to try out their grain growing ideas early using a portable conveyor belt to load barley onto train cars to be delivered to distilleries in the region.
The next year, in 2020, the port received a $1.75 million allocation from the Washington state Legislature, with the help of Orcutt and 20th Legislative District seatmate Rep. Peter Abbarno, R-Chehalis.
In 2025, Gluesenkamp Perez secured $4.12 million for the project through federal community project funding. The project was one of 15 in Southwest Washington to receive such funding.
In 2020, stakeholders including the port, the NABC and many others began work on a U.S. Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration grant. After finally completing the grant in 2025, the project received $3.14 million in additional federal funding.
The project finally broke ground in the early days of April last year and popped up relatively quickly. In January 2026, the Southwest Washington Growers Co-Op first tested out the new toy using a traditional and separate grain elevator to load the first bits of grain into the silos.
Just recently, the co-op, with help from the port, installed bean ladders in the smaller three silos to allow local growers to store peas and beans in the facility without damaging them.
After the Wednesday ribbon cutting and the final improvements to the facility, it is now open for business, and in reality, it already was. The growers co-op has been closely involved in the project and already has uses planned for the facility, including for shipping out a contract for peas this summer.
The facility is open to use by the public and charges storage and transfer fees for use, but is intended to provide access to more markets for farmers and a cheaper or more effective alternative to long-distance trucking.
For previous reporting by The Chronicle on the Southwest Washington Grain Project, visit https://tinyurl.com/4y4m73xh.
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