The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-01-21
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (22,915 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
On January 21 (a Tuesday), the Portland City Council held a morning work session, described as an informational session rather than a decision-making meeting, regarding Zenith Energy's operations in Portland. The session opened with an explanation that a separate afternoon listening session would allow public testimony, while the work session itself featured three panels: city staff, Zenith representatives, and community panelists, with council questions after each. City staff presented background on Land Use Compatibility Statements (LUX), zoning code history, comprehensive plan policies, and the multi-year permitting and litigation history involving Zenith's terminal, including a pending LUX application tied to a state-imposed February 4, 2025 deadline. Councilors raised concerns about late-posted materials, the complexity of the presentation, the council's limited authority over the LUX decision, transparency of prior LUX approvals, and requests for additional documentation. Zenith representatives described their operations, safety and seismic assessments, and transition toward renewable fuels, fielding councilor questions about crude oil volumes, sustainable aviation fuel, and permitting history. A community panel—including tribal, environmental, and neighborhood representatives—raised concerns about safety, transparency, treaty rights, and Zenith's compliance record, without a subsequent question period due to time constraints. Any votes occurring elsewhere in the transcript were not addressed, as this session was explicitly non-action-oriented.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
0 Good morning. I know we've got a few folks working tech issues out still, and a couple of counselors who are running late this morning, but we do want to get started. I will open this morning's work session. It is January 21st, Tuesday, January 21st at 9:32 a.m. This morning we have a work session about zenith's operations within the city of Portland. We will be coming back this afternoon for a listening session to hear from the public, but we generally don't take testimony from the public during work sessions. We do have three panels this morning. We will be starting with a team from the city talking about some of the technical pieces around zenith's operations within the city, and the city's work with the company. We will then hear a presentation from zenith about the work that they are doing here, and then we'll hear a presentation from community panelists. I want to be clear that as a work session, this is not a space where the council will be taking action. We will have that separate listening session again, not a space where we will be taking action today. The goal of today's work session is to make sure that councilors and portlanders have a shared understanding of zenith energy's Portland terminal developments, the history of the city's decisions that impact those developments, and the city's role and options for next steps as we move forward. Given the specific attention to zenith's request for an air permit from the state of Oregon and the required land use compatibility statement, staff will be providing an in-depth overview of that administrative action. But this is not a legal hearing. This is not a hearing on that. And we don't actually know at this time if the council will have a role in that work. We'll take questions, councilors after each panel. So after the city presents will have an opportunity to ask any questions about the city's role. After zenith presents will have an opportunity to ask zenith about their operations, and after the community panel will be able to ask community members about any questions we have around their testimony. We likely won't have time for questions during the listening session this afternoon, so that we can maximize the opportunity for as many people as possible to testify. We'll have a short break between our morning work session and the listening panel this afternoon as well. I will start us off by inviting up, or I guess you all are already up here, but by turning it over to deputy city administrator donnie oliveira and staff for the presentation about the work that the city has done, the history of the city's work with zenith, and what some of the next steps may be. Thank you all for being here this morning.
1 Great. Thank you, madam president, and good morning, councilors. Donnie oliveira, for the record. Thank you for the opportunity to have me and my colleagues here today to kind of break down what's going on with zenith and our role and their state air permit. I'm joined by Eric engstrom, who's the director of the bureau of planning and sustainability, and david kuhnhausen to my left, who's the director at the Portland permitting and development bureau. So before we kind of get into the technical, I just want to kind of set the stage of why we're here today. First and foremost, the issue of the critical energy infrastructure hub in Portland and the concerns that our community has about them, that site related to seismic, hazardous, you know, response challenges. Clearly, the impacts of fossil fuel infrastructure on our climate crisis is not new. We've heard loud and clear, especially recently. I want to acknowledge and thank all the voices from Portland that spoke up very clearly in the last couple of months, I've received several hundred letters. Speaking up about the issue. So thank you for that. But this isn't a new issue. But today we're here because we want to ensure that you all are up to speed on the history of zenith from the perspective of the city's administration of that site, the land use code, and the rules that apply to zenith. As we think about and contemplate things like land use compatibility statements. I also want to say that we're in a moment where zenith has requested the of the city an updated lux that was compelled back to the city by the state. And so the timeliness of this is that we were given a deadline of February 4th to be responsive to that request from the state. So the timeline of this is reflective of that. Ask, as council president mentioned, the goal of today's work session is for your staff to really, you know, walk you through the codes and policies and processes that we consider all land use decisions. We're using the zenith moment to talk about the lux element, and we'll talk about land use compatibility statements as lux going forward. But really going to focus on the zenith action before us today. And kind of walk through the history of how we got to where we are today. So david kuhnhausen will walk through sort of the nuts and bolts of that. I also invited Eric engstrom to talk about the larger land use and zoning. You know, roles and responsibilities the city has to enforce. And really, what guides our future as a city. That's always iterative as we update new policies and plans and you all will, you know, have great agency over that on your as your term. But where are we at today and what are the authority we have within those current codes and policies? And of course, we'll take questions at the end to answer that. I do also want to acknowledge and thank council president's vision to set aside a work session in March to broadly speak about the cei hub will be able to invite our regional partners and our state partners to join us for that. So largely today, we're going to focus on zenith because we have a short amount of time to get through a lot of a lot of content. Can we get the next slide, please? So specific to the agenda today we're going to walk through what a lux is the land use regulations that govern us and guide us, why those are important and why and why the stability of that and predictability is important not just to our communities, but also to the city staff that that that govern those. We're going to go through the real tough history of the of the lux in 2021, all the way to today. That is the permitting process that the state's going through. And then we're going to tease you all with what comes next from a future and current planning processes that we'll talk more about in March. So with that, I'm going to hand it over to david to get the presentation going. Thank you.
2 Thank you donnie, for the record, my name is david kuhnhausen. I'm the interim director of Portland permitting and development. As donnie said, I thank everyone for their for the opportunity to discuss this site in more detail today. So what is a land use compatibility statement? A land use compatibility statement, as they're often or as they're often referred to, a lux is a statement that evaluates whether a proposed use or activity is compatible with the existing land use regulations that apply to a specific property. So pd receives approximately 10 to 15 lux applications a month, or about 150 a year. So to request a lux, an applicant must submit a zoning information request to the city that is reviewed by our land use services staff within permitting and development. Some of the agencies that request the completion of a lux include the Oregon dmv for auto dismantling businesses, Oregon department of agriculture for hemp handling businesses, olcc for bottle drop redemption centers, the Oregon department of education for child care facilities, and Oregon deq, which actually lists 25 different permit types that they could require a lux for. It's important to point out that Oregon law does not provide a process for, or require any sort of procedural requirements for a jurisdiction's processing of a lux. This lux is simply an evaluation of materials that includes the proposed use to determine whether or not that use is allowed at that site. It's not a permit. It's not a land use decision. It does not give authority for a business to operate. It only states whether or not it's allowed in that specific location. It's also important to point out that because it's not a permit, staff may do due diligence regarding the history of the site, including the permit history, but any sort of associated permit on that site, whether we received it or issued it, that has no bearing on the decision regarding the actual lux. Next slide please. So I want to walk through how alexis processed and just to place this in this administrative process into context, I would estimate that 99.9% of lux requests that the bureau of. I'm sorry that permitting and development receive do not in there end up at the director's level. I would say that 98 to 99% of them don't even end up with the division manager of land use services, and very few are even reviewed by a section supervisor. In land use services, this is a staff level administrative process. In this particular case, we are in that less than 1% of the time situation. So I want to share how the other 99% of the time these are processed. Again, when an agency requires a lux to be completed, the applicant emails that zoning confirmation request the agency form. So whoever is requesting that lux and any relevant information, including site plans and narrative, any sort of studies that they've done to the development services technician within land use services, the technician set up a folder in amanda, which is our internal permitting database, and then they send a bill to that applicant. The current cost of the lux is $370, and that accounts for about one and a half to two hours of staff time. After that fee is paid by the applicant, the supervisor in land use services is contacted to assign the lux. Again, they're not taking a look at the lux. They're not reviewing it. They're just assigning it to staff. The lux is then placed on a planner's to do list, and as they work through other projects on that to do list, they end up with the lux at the top of that list. The planner then reviews the application and all any and all supplemental materials and researches the zoning code based on the uses now typically, and what you probably didn't see in the previous slide. And it's a little bit hard to see just based on the size. Is that the lux form from these agencies typically includes a yes or no checkbox. Does it meet the zoning code or not? And that that can be there can be a couple of different criteria associated with that. It could be exempt. It could be allowed by right. It could be non-conforming but allowed or it could not be allowed. And in the case that is not allowed, what we would identify other requirements that would they would need to comply with before a determination can be made. Just like all requests that we receive for any type of work. The bureau of I keep referring to bts I'm sorry, planning or permitting and development has a responsibility to communicate with the applicant to ensure we're clear on what they're requesting and that we have all relevant information so we can then justify our decision. After a decision is made, the form is returned to the customer. And again, this form, even if we check yes, is not a permit. It's just verification that the use is allowed. Allowed under that zoning code. With that, I'm going to pass it off to erik engstrom to discuss more about the land use regulations.
3 Good morning. For the record, erik engstrom, interim director at the bureau of planning and sustainability. So when the Portland permitting and development staff reviewed the zenith lux, they reviewed it against land use policies and regulations. And that boils down to two things our comprehensive plan and our zoning code. The comprehensive plan is a long range plan that helps the city prepare for and manage growth of both residential and employment. Looking 20 years out to 2035, it includes policies, a map, and an infrastructure plan. The zoning code is what we reviewed development against on a day by day basis. The important point here is in general, cities in Oregon don't directly apply comprehensive plans to development. They review a general principle. A long standing principle is that we, if we want to apply a policy in the comprehensive plan to development, we generally need to write a zoning code provision to implement it. The city is responsible for making sure the zoning code remains consistent with the comprehensive plan and other state planning regulations. And there's a there's a recurring periodic review process to ensure that's true. It's unusual to examine comprehensive plan policies when processing a lux. That was done in this case, in part because the commissioner in charge, acting in their executive capacity, asked for it. The context for that was there was a high level of public interest, and the fact that our zoning code was still subject to litigation at that time. With all that in mind, let's look more closely at some of these policies. The 2035 comprehensive plan and our zoning codes. There are a few of these policies on the screen before you. Policy 6.48. Fossil fuel distribution 4.79. Natural hazards and climate change risks and impacts policy 4.81. Disaster resilient development. Those are three, among many others, that were reviewed for the zenith lux. I want to emphasize for policy 4.79 the word limit is there not prohibit. The word is an important context for discussing the luba decision. The comprehensive plan defines limit as maximize or reduce something, or the effects of something relative to the current situation or a potential future situation. For a fossil fuel terminal. Zoning amendments. The council has previously interpreted the phrase regional market, which you also see on this slide, in the first policy to mean the state of Oregon, parts of southwest and eastern Washington, as well as parts of idaho, in recognition that portland's fossil fuel terminals currently handle 90% of the fossil fuels consumed in Oregon, and also serve those other areas that I mentioned. Next slide please. This slide shows a list of the different zoning code elements that would have been reviewed. The box highlights the definition or the provision for bulk fossil fuel terminals. It shows that bulk fossil fuel terminals are allowed, but subject to special limitations. The use categories in chapter 920 are also important here. The applicant's description of activities are compared to the characteristics of that use category. When we're determining whether something is an allowed use, the zoning code has definitions of fossil fuel and renewable fuel. Next slide please. This describes some of the characteristics of the current zoning code relative to fossil fuel terminals. The key intent of this policy is to stop making the problem bigger, allow existing terminals to make safety improvements, and support a transition to renewable fuels as a bridge to electrification. The zoning code defines use category for bulk bulk fossil fuels terminals. Sorry, that allows the city to regulate those uses prior to that code change. In 2016, fossil fuel terminals were regulated as warehouse and distribution facilities. Both code. The code defines fossil fuel and renewable fuel, and it sets a high standard for renewable fuel with no more than 5% fossil content. Blended fuel is also considered a fossil fuel. Under this code, existing terminals cannot expand fossil fuel storage tank capacity, but they can reconfigure existing capacity to support new or safer tanks. While the code does not allow expansion for fossil fuels storage capacity, it does allow for renewable and aviation fuels. The trade off embedded in this code is that existing terminals are recognized as limited uses. Recognizing the need for a fuel during transition to renewable fuels and eventually electrification, and also aviation fuel is one of the only components of fossil fuel sector that is currently increasing in use. Next slide. So I'm going to go through the background of this of this process over the years for a moment here in 2016, the adoption of our current fossil fuel code was the beginning of this odyssey. The code was appealed by the western states petroleum association, the working waterfront coalition, the Portland business alliance, the columbia pacific trades council. The first appeal went to luba, the court of appeals, and then the Oregon supreme court. The city prevailed on key issues, but it was sent back to us for additional findings on some of the policies. In 2019, the council adopted with additional findings, and that decision was appealed by the same groups to luba again, which issued another decision remanding it back to us for additional findings on a few additional policies. In 2022, the council adopted the code changes a third time. The same groups appealed again. At this time, luba affirmed the city's decision and the appellants did not appeal further. However, at that time, new parties emerged and challenged the code in federal court. The state of montana, the western energy alliance, the pacific propane gas association, the idaho petroleum marketers convenience store association, and christensen and company, Portland based distributor. That case is still pending. I want to point out, as these cases progress, the legal issues were getting narrower. Without going into the details, during this time, we have avoided major policy changes to avoid in part reopening those threads that have been closed. And I think I'll turn it back to david now to describe the sequence of permits.
4 Real quick. David. Yeah.
5 Thank you.
6 Eric.
7 Counselors, for this particular moment, we really want to highlight, beyond just the incredible amount of work that went into getting us to where we're at in the code, which is still pending, given federal court challenges. It set the framework for how the city was trying to long term address our fossil fuel infrastructure challenges and how we wanted to think more broadly from the planning perspective is before we start to, you know, work backwards, we had to prevent the harm, as Eric spoke to. And given that and given that obvious need, I think that staff going back to 2016 clearly defined. We've had legal challenges throughout the entire process. So this kind of gives you sort of a just a general situational awareness of what it looks like for a city, in this case, Portland, to try to directly address fossil fuel infrastructure. Again, just context.
8 So yeah.
9 Thanks, danny. So as we jump into this timeline, I want to acknowledge that there's a bunch of work that still needs to take place in terms of the evaluation of every single permit associated with this project. There are 95 entries from 2018 to current just on this property. There are other properties associated with this that are now included in the lux request. So as we jump into this timeline, it's probably not possible to dive into every single permit. And but to that end, I want to provide an overview showing the breadth, and then I'll go in depth on key moments throughout this timeline, specifically focusing on the lux request that happened in 2122 and then late in 2024. So zenith started operating the site in 2017 and started handling crude oil in 2019. As I'm sure you're all aware, crude oil is brought in via rail cars stored in tanks at the site and then loaded onto marine barges that go to west coast refineries. In 2019, zenith proposed new pipeline connections to the mccall dock via land use application. In addition to the land use review and the building permits for that work, zenith also requested a change to the franchise agreement to extend pipes under the public right of way along northwest front avenue. The city denied that franchise change request, and zenith ended up withdrawing their land use application. Next slide please. In 2020, zenith submitted a building permit application to build additional rail car racks specifically for renewable fuels. This permit is still under inspection at this time. And we actually have pd actually has an inspector visiting the site today determined to determine what work still needs to be completed to final that actual building permit. When that application was submitted, it triggered a deq stormwater lux, which was subsequently approved in 2021, zenith completed construction of rail car racks that had been applied for by the previous owner in 2014. As an aside, permits, regardless of their status, do transfer when ownership transfers from one owner to the next on a specific property. This happens with all types of permits all across the city all the time. Next slide please. In 2022, luba ended up remanding the decision. Let's see. Yeah. Remanded the lux decision and the city ended up approving that. And I'll cover that in more detail momentarily. In 2023, zenith applied for a greenway review, which is a land use case for the installation of new pipeline connections to the mccall dock. Also in 2023, zenith again requested a change to their franchise agreement to allow those pipeline connections under northwest front avenue again. In both cases, zenith committed that the new pipelines would be dedicated to renewable fuels and non-fuel products, and they would use a third party inspection service to confirm that those facilities would only be used for those purposes. Lastly, in 2023, zenith applied for a building permit and completed work to demolish eight existing storage tanks at the site, which was part of their commitment under the approval of the 2022 lux. Next slide please. In 2024, zenith followed up on that greenway review and franchise agreement request with a building permit application for the renewable pipeline connection to the mccall dock. That building permit was issued six days ago, January 15th, 2025. The zoning permit that's also called out in the greenway review was issued the following day. Again, these permits were conditions of that greenway review. According to our records, work has not started on either one of those permits. In the fall of last year, 2024, deq began a public comment period for the draft air contaminant discharge permit, and after a public hearing, deq conducted a site visit and determined that a new lux was required. That would include the tax loss for zenith and was using mccall and chevron docks again. That was called out in the narrative of the 2022 lux, but not listed on the application. Next slide please. So this is where I'm going to go back and describe in more detail the lux processing in 2021 and 22. So as deq started their permit renewal in 2021, the community successfully lobbied deq to require renewal of the title five air quality permit and made the case that there was enough change in the operations to require a new lux. The community also successfully lobbied the city to look beyond just the zoning code and apply the comprehensive plan policies directly as well. To reiterate on the comments that I made previously, this is outside of the norm of how lux is usually processed. We don't apply the comprehensive plan. That's not standard practice. That was not standard practice then, and it is not today either. Initially, the city denied that request and because although the zoning allows for a fossil fuel terminal use, the city found the terminal activities did not meet the goals and policies included in the comprehensive plan that you see on this slide. After that denial, zenith appealed the lux decision to luba, the land use board of appeals. Next slide please. Luba then determined that the city can apply the policies directly, but determined that the policies need to clearly state with evidence that the use is prohibited. The city would need to show that they that the use could not be made compatible with conditions of approval. And it's also important to point out that luba did not consider the lux was a statutory permit that requires a quasi judicial land use hearing. Next slide please. So zenith submitted a new lux in 2022, this time with the conditions and the city reconsidered that lux and in the end approved that lux. Those conditions are laid out here. But just to make sure everyone knows those conditions include phasing out crude oil trains within five years, that they disable eight of the 44 rail car spots for unloading crude oil, that they demolished 30 tanks within seven years. Again, they demolished eight of them via permit in 2023 that no new fuel fossil storage tanks would be allowed, and that they reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds to less than 40 tons per year, which represents a nearly 80% reduction from the existing 179 tons per year that are allowed under zenith's existing operating permit with deq, zenith submits quarterly inspection reports to Portland, permitting and development that we use to track compliance with these commitments, and as of today, they are all on schedule. Next slide please. So that brings us to the current air contaminant discharge permit process. Again, deq required that new lux in late 2024. And as donnie stated, there was a there was a request to have that done by February 4th, 2025. Zenith submitted a new lux request with changes including the addition of those two tax lots where the mccall and chevron docks are listed. Again, that was called out in the narrative in 2022, but not listed on the application. They also include some clarification on the handling of the aviation fuel at that site. Again, p and d is currently in possession of that lux request and is processing it as we speak. Next slide please.
10 All right. Thanks, david.
11 Before I dive into the current planning efforts that both p and d and bts are engaged in with our partners at the county and the state, I think it's appropriate to acknowledge that in 2021, when the lux was denied again, kind of going outside of that standard process, it was at the direction of the commission in charge at that time, using their executive powers to who was being responsive. And that person at the time was commissioner Ryan, now councilor Ryan. So it was counsel ryan's direction to say, no, let's let's deny that, lux. So I just want to acknowledge that and also that going back to the 2022 lux that was approved with conditions, those conditions that come out of thin air, those were based on conversations we've been having with advocates at the time that were looking at what would be the alternative to just a, you know, a just a yes to the lux. So there was a conversation that was, I think, sometimes captured as a backroom deal, but I think I want to just name that. Those are the types of conversations that happen with all of our processes when we're trying to understand what the user is trying to accomplish and how we can improve upon it. I think just to state this like the obvious, we would much prefer to have if they're going to be allowed to exist, that all of our operators are are moving renewable fuels versus fossil fuels, acknowledging that there's no difference when it comes to seismic challenges and hazardous potential hazardous hazardous to our river where we're trying to transition to a, you know, a Green economy and a Green energy infrastructure city. All right. So with that, so where we're at today, last year, city staff at bts received some funds from FEMA that are going to allow us to contemplate an update to our comp plan that would really start to tackle and get at the heart of what is the appropriate use for land in the cei, what are the rules that we can implement that this council will contemplate in the future to accelerate a transition off of fossil fuel that will look at the comp plan, but also just the foundation for policies that can can hold water legally. Frankly, there'll be a group of opportunity for people to provide, to participate and provide feedback on that, and that'll go through the planning commission before it comes to council and your new committees as appropriate. We mentioned the work session that's coming up in March. That will be another opportunity for us to talk about the cei more broadly. But these are two things, along with the existing work that the bureaus are doing to transition us off of fossil fuels to meet our city's climate action goals, and to be a regional partner for seismic safety and hazardous prevention in our communities. We'll dive into that more deeply in March, because I want to focus on zenith and their operations today. And that's the end. The next slide, right. Yep. That's the end of our presentation. And now we're happy to take questions.
12 Thank you all so much I know that was a lot of information very quickly. Councilor Morillo.
13 Yeah. Thank you guys for being here today and for giving us this presentation. I want to start off by saying that the materials posted for this work session were not posted until around 730 or 830 in the morning. That does not give us adequate time as counselors to review the materials and to prep questions for you. And that is unacceptable, especially on an issue that is a matter of such intense public interest. So in the future, I expect that those materials will be posted in advance, the way that all other council materials are. I have a lot of questions to get into, but I wanted to say that first because I think it's important that we get that on the record. Can you clarify for us if zenith is claiming that some of these new, new facilities were being built in order to pass renewable energy sources like renewable fuels, what is the difference in safety for the community if renewable fuels end up in the Willamette river? Because it's my understanding that some of those mixed fuels are actually more dangerous because they sink at different levels, which would make the impacts of cleanup much harder for everybody. That's my first question, and I'll let you answer that before I keep going.
14 All right.
15 Thank you for the question, counselor. Acknowledging that the powerpoint wasn't, to your first point, posted in a timely manner, I would say that we were still pulling together over the weekend, but yes, noted. And we'll absolutely be better going forward to the question of the fuels. You're absolutely right. I don't think we're suggesting that renewable fuels would somehow be better in the in an instance of a seismic, you know, activity or something disastrous when it comes to a river, the condition of the lux that we are centered on around that is the is the storage tank removal and the commitment that if any new tanks are being built there for renewable fuels, which will also meet higher standards for seismic stability, etc, that old tanks just don't meet. So I think I don't want to misrepresent that renewable fuels are somehow safer. They're a better fuel for our emission standards and our carbon intensity. But certainly I don't want to misrepresent that those are somehow going to be safer.
16 Thank you. And I have a follow up question. As far as the permitting process goes. So correct me if I'm wrong. This is how I understood your presentation. It sounds like zenith applied for a permit for a specific use of the land. Then they eventually wanted to update and build more, you know, change their pipes and retrofitting and everything in order to do additional kinds of work that were not approved under the prior permit. Was there an explicit application for a new permit for those new facilities and for that new function? And did the city get that documentation and approve it?
17 So we do have permits for the work that was called out in that greenway review in 2023 that calls out a building permit and zoning permits for mitigation of plantings and other other zoning requirements. So yes, we did we did receive that information again, that that permit was just issued last week. But there's no reason to believe that there's anything outside of that that has been done without the benefit of a permit.
18 Okay. I'll let someone else ask more questions now.
19 Thank you.
20 Councilor Koyama Lane.
21 Thank you so much. I'm wondering if you can talk a bit more about how we involve the public in these high profile decisions that have a lot of public interest. I think we can agree that there's a lot of public interest. We've all gotten emails and are having our constituents reach out to us. It seems like there's disagreement between feeling like there was a backroom deal versus advocates being brought in. And so I'm just wondering if you can talk more about, like, what should the process be in your opinions? Should it be that when it's a more high profile lux decision, it should it be more out in the open so people can testify? And I mean, we're the ones that are accountable to voters. And so making sure that it's the public is feeling heard. Can you talk a little bit about how we can make sure that that advocates and our constituents are feeling like the work that's happening isn't behind closed doors? It sounds like that's not the intention, but it seems like that's not matching up with what we're hearing.
22 Okay.
23 So thank you for the question, madam vice president. This council, it will be absolutely your prerogative and your, you know, your direction to give us any, you know, sort of guidance, policy or otherwise on how to address community input for things going forward. If you want to set that policy that is 100% within your your legal right to do. Staff are compelled by law for legal reasons to ensure that we're our decisions are appeal proof, so to speak, to follow what's in our code. So the existing law is largely agnostic to the size or the scale of the lux, as david alluded to, there's hundreds of lux that come in in good years. There's more because that means there's more development happening from a economic perspective. But nonetheless, it's a typically a call, a counter action, meaning someone comes to the counter, they get the process done and they go, they get their permit with the state, which is that's what they're really solving for right when they come in for a lux, it's not a permit with the city they're asking for. It's like, hey, can you confirm with the state that the thing we're doing is allowable in your city so that they can complete the permit that we're asking for? So we're largely a step lux is a step in their process. Having said that, to your point, for the big items, for things like a zenith or maybe there's other things I'm not even going to even contemplate, could the city consider a distinct process that doesn't exist today for those things? Absolutely. Does it exist in code today? No. As far as the process as it was today, I don't want to speak on behalf of prior leadership, but I can tell you we certainly treated this lux a lot differently than we have any other. And I think we're sort of in a bit of a quagmire because of that. I think if staff had to try to put the conditions on, we probably wouldn't be here for different reasons. This lux is distinct, and I think we just continue to learn through the experience that sometimes it's might be best from a legal perspective to stick to the procedures. Having said that, I'm glad we're having this conversation. We've had a chance to daylight what zenith is and potentially what it isn't, and also brings broader attention to the cei at all. Zenith is just one facility of many. And we're you know, we're focused on zenith today because of the decision point. But there's a lot of things to contemplate more broadly. So thank you for the question and look forward to working with you all to think about what would be the appropriate place. The other thing I want to flag the last thing is because I I'd be remiss not to mention on behalf of pad, I don't think this council would want to have all the lux as we see come to you for consideration. So I think there's a balance. Right. So not saying that you said that. I just want to figure out what's the right way to approach this so that you all and the community does have a chance to speak, but not in a way that just gets you bogged down in perpetual hearings.
24 And.
25 Danny, if I could just add one, one thought to that, I think david said it earlier, but I want to emphasize it. The deluxe is kind of a process of us confirming what the state, what the current code says about that use and which is distinct from the policy discussion about what the code should be in the future or what the policy should be in the future.
26 Yeah, yeah.
27 And just to add on, the lux itself is not a permit, but it is part of the permitting process. So before a customer, you know, for in the situation that I called out where a child care facility would be requiring a lux, that would add time to their overall permitting process to verify that, that a specific site that they've located would actually be allowed to be operated as a child care facility. So going before council, you know, depending on the political nature of that or where it's located, that could add timeline to the overall time it takes to open up that business.
28 Thank you, councilor Green.
29 Thank you for being here today. I have a number of questions. I'll try to be respectful of the broader set of colleagues here who have questions. So I want to focus on the construction piece first. My question is, did zenith energy ever disclose the modifications and operations referenced in the deq's on site investigation report, specifically going back to 2021, which would have been prior to the 2022 lux? Did they disclose that to the city and if so, when, where and what was disclosed?
30 I would need to take a look at the deq report to see what is referenced in there and then get back to you.
31 Okay. Thank you.
32 Okay. So you'll get back to me I had a follow up, but I think that will come in in the getting back to me part in regards to the jet fuels. When did the city learn about zenith's plan to blend jet fuels at its site?
33 When they. Thanks for the question, councilor. When they came in for the greenway permit that was contemplated, that was considered then when they started discussing more specifically utilizing saf to be, you know, to sustainable aviation fuel. Excuse me, to be distributed in the western states. That was in the spring that we got more confirmation that was going to happen was in the spring of 2024.
34 Okay. Thank you.
35 But the pipe but again, but the pipeline, the capacity and capabilities would have been a part of the greenway review as a consideration, if not explicit.
36 This is the 2022 greenway review.
37 2023 2023. Okay.
38 So in the 2022 lux, there's no discussion of saf blending or jet fuel stuff, right?
39 No, no. Okay.
40 Is blending fuel on site at the zenith facility considered a new use?
41 That's not by building code or zoning code use or I'm sorry, zoning code or determination.
42 Okay. Thank you.
43 This is going to be my last one, I promise you.
44 That's great.
45 Keep going. Are you aware of any. So I want to kind of bring us back to what was in the presentation here you mentioned, you know, the comp plan policies. There was a slide with a couple pieces, and you sort of really emphasized that policy. 4.79in the comp plan says limit not prohibit fossil fuel expansions. My question then is, are you about are you aware of any long term ambitions for expansion by zenith energy at the cei hub?
46 I am not.
47 I would guess that that's a supply demand question. Councilor if there's if, for example, if they are distributing saf and pdx or lax, sfo etc. Are looking to transition over and they are the distributor of that. Possibly, but it's speculative.
48 But you have no you have no indication from zenith energy that they have ambitions for broader expansion for west coast delivery.
49 I would say that I think like any other company, they're probably looking to expand consistently. But so I'd say safely that it would probably be a fair assessment to say that they are interested in expanding their operations, but they're going to be up momentarily. And you can ask.
50 Them.
51 I will thank you. I just want to I want to flag that because while the comp plan 4.79 does suggest limiting, not prohibiting, if we're issuing franchising agreements and land use compatibility statements to a company that has broad expansion plans that would contradict limit. So I'm going to yield. Thank you.
52 Councilor Novick.
53 Thank you, madam president. By the way, I apologize for being hard to see. I tried to fix my chair so I could lean back further and I lowered it, which in my case is a problem. And so another question about the airport fuels. I you on one of the slides it says fossil fuels exceptions for fossil fuel storage for exclusive use at airports. What is that an exception to. Is that an exception to our, our limitation of new fossil fuel facilities or an exception to. Yeah. I won't try to clarify. What is that? What is that an exception to?
54 It's an exception to the limitation in the zoning code on new fossil fuel terminals or expansions.
55 Okay. So the zoning code does not limit fossil fuels storage for exclusive use at airports.
56 No.
57 Okay. I'm sorry. These are kind of randomly these are not in a particular order. The February 4th deadline. Is that a deadline that's applied to us. And we suffer penalties if we don't respond to it? Or is it a deadline for zenith that it might be a problem for them if we stretch beyond that, but not for us?
58 Thank you.
59 For the question, counselor. It's our understanding that while as a deadline for zenith, obviously the city is compelled to be responsive. And as long as we are showing good faith that we're working towards that, that there may be some wiggle room. But we are working with the intention that February 4th is the is the deadline.
60 But if we can't make it, the world doesn't end for the city. Correct? Okay, let's see. Is zenith the only one of the many facilities of the fossil fuel hub that is trucking fuel in? Is that part of the reason for particular public concern? They're trucking stuff as opposed to bringing things in by pipeline.
61 We we'll get back to you on that. There's a lot of operations happening across the town. I wouldn't want to speak definitively. I think councilor to get to the point of your question, though, we're discussing zenith because of the nature of their currently asking for permits, both from the state and us. So we're they're largely at a decision point for, for their operations.
62 Let's see. My apologies. I'm shifting through. Oh. On you said that they are on track for their various commitments they made when they current lux was was issued. What is on track mean particularly for phase out crude crude oil transports within five years? Have they been reducing crude oil transports by 20% a year or something? What's the status of that?
63 Councilor? I'd like to allow zenith to answer that question when they present shortly. They will have more specifics on that. But it's our understanding, based on the last review that we received, that they were meeting their targets as as outlined.
64 Okay. And then same slide reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds to less than 40 tons per year, which is significant reduction of what's allowed under the current permit. My understanding is that it might be a reduction what's allowed allowed, but not a significant reduction, if at all, from what they've actually been emitting. Is that right?
65 That's is that related to their tons of their their air permit currently?
66 Yeah, I. Think so.
67 Councilor I'm going to have to get back to you and defer to the state on that. We can get that information with our colleagues there.
68 Okay. I think that was everything. Thank you very much.
69 Counselor Zimmerman.
70 Thanks. And.
71 Donnie, your team met with counselor Green and I back in December. We called for this work session, so I appreciate you pulling it together. And to counselor Green on, I'm sure he has many more questions. He's a great a point on this. I do want to say that I agree with counselor Morillo in terms of just the materials. This is this is tough to get this this late in the game. And then I'll mention this again. I've mentioned it before. I recognize that this government doesn't have a history of having county, excuse me, city attorney's presence at our work sessions, but I find that to be a significant lack, particularly on this type of topic. And I'd ask either the council president.
72 We do have them in the back of the room if they're needed.
73 Today.
74 I'm aware, but their seat is here to be part of this proceeding. So I recognize that that's a practice in this government, but it's the only government I've been a part of where that's not a current practice, and I think it's actually hindering this conversation a bit. I am struggling with this a little bit, donnie. I think perhaps you and the team, I think I described this earlier last month as hoping for a work session that brought us all into the same page, because there's been such a mix of information that's out there, and I would generally put that at the this should be a briefing at the third grade level. I think you've underestimated my third grade education or overestimated, excuse me, because I feel like this was a graduate approach to this problem, and I don't know that I am any closer after this briefing to feeling confident that I have 11 colleagues and myself included, who know steps, available outcomes. If reasons why on a host of decisions. And so that's a little bit concerning. And I think that I don't think it was intentional, but I do think that this looks like a presentation by people who are deeply baked in this topic for public consumption, which means it flew over the tops of a lot of heads. So I just I just want to note that and I am committed to working through this. This is my district. I went to university of Portland, so I got away with eight years of education. Excuse me, six years of education over there that I luckily didn't suffer from anything that could have occurred. But I'm just I'm not I'm not there yet. I want to be supportive. And I do generally support the transition to a renewable type of fuel. And I'm not looking for a Portland who has no tanks. I'm not looking for a Portland who has no transportation like I'm a consumer of this. I have all these same things, but I can't look at this piece of land and say, yes, this makes sense here. And that's what I'm really struggling with. I was hoping that we would see a little bit more in terms of the decision making factors that played a part, and I'll go to there was a page and I'm not sure which it's like fourth or fifth slide, but it outlines the 2035 comprehensive plan policy, 4.79 natural hazards and climate change risks and impacts limit development in or near areas prone to natural hazards, using the most current hazard and climate change related information and maps. I guess the question I wrote down is how do we square that with where we're at today? I was hoping we would see things like those maps. Are they readily available? Are we using them? Can we bring us up to speed in terms of that. So I'm going to look for that look to see more of that. And then I've asked this question before I continue to wonder, in a world where we are making improvements to the types of fuels we use, are we and is this decision stuck on the banks of this river because it's where it has existed before. But when I look at an overlay of Portland airport, I see a lot of much closer land. And my dumb guy on the dais, math tells me that a pipeline that is this long has a less risk than a pipeline that's this long, just in terms of if we're talking seismic. And I'm curious about how do we as a council, that's why I'm hoping to get into questions like what actions and levers does this council have? How do we take a vision that we have to reduce risk, get it closer to the end user, out of an area that I'm not sure meets the 4.79, like what kind of tools do we have? And that's what I haven't gotten from this presentation. And that's. I'm a I'm a critical guy, but I say it so that I can get direct answers. So please just take it as such.
75 Yeah. Thank you councilor Real quick. So I, I want to just acknowledge again the materials not being ready is definitely something I think we're all committed to doing. That's that's an easy yes to the simplification of this I think. Kudos to david and Eric for trying to simplify a very complex situation. But if I were just to distill this down, is I'm hoping and this gets to your last question, that in March and hopefully before that, actually when we I think we're going to meet with some of you already that we start to have the conversation of what are the tools that this council, this administration has to look at the city, not on a case by case basis, but to your point about what is the best use of the land, what is where does that infrastructure truly belong? What are the trade offs? Trying to really synthesize that into this moment? The zenith lux, not zenith, but the zenith lux was just not that decision point. It could have been. It may have been, but right now, where we're sitting today, to get to your point, we think that the lux is a thing administratively that we have to contemplate and hopefully begin the conversation with you all about how we address as a city, as a region, because not just the city, right? The cea. My hope is that when we get back to you all in March, we'll be able to answer those questions. We'll have those maps. We'll have our partners up to describe the pros and cons, the trade offs, all the risks that are associated with with energy infrastructure. We're not the only region that deals with this. And what we have to consider and what you all will have to contemplate as you think about the future of how land is used in Portland. The last thing I'll just say about the about the zenith cea, you know, dilemma that we're in right now is we're trying to take advantage of this moment to compel an operator in our city to be better, not just with the fuels they're using, but to actually address the seismic concerns that communities had and to actually be able to withstand whatever sort of dilemmas. There's nothing's perfect, but we're compelling them to do that. And that's that's the work that that the staff been working on for several years now to be determined. But that's the goal given the authorities. We have.
76 A follow up to, I think one thing I'm hoping to get out of this a little bit more is I what I think I'm hearing is that the city's tools relative to a lux at this time are limited, in your opinion? I would love to know. A better or see a better mapping if you were to receive direction from the administration or the legislative body of this government to deny something, even though you think it not correct what the second, third and fourth order effects are there, right? Does it delay an inevitable because luba comes back and says, we operated outside of legal parameters? Does it? This is where I think attorneys should be up on the dais with us. Does it put us at risk for other things? Does it throw the whole thing out? Because if you can't meet certain standards, then the applicant is the winner of the james. This is what I'm not getting here. That would be helpful to understand, because I am feeling like either a decision has been preordained. And I don't love that. But the levers available to this council as it relates to an action happening in our community is something that I think we should at least be able to discuss. I'm just. Yeah, I'm we're I think we're clawing at little bits here versus the larger ask here. So I'll just leave it there. Thank you, madam president.
77 Councilor, I could just elaborate on one thing danny said, which is the comprehensive plan is a 20 year policy document. And so there's going to be a lot of policies. And you cited one that we're not we have not realized its true intent yet. And that's clear from the, you know, the space between that policy and where we are with the lux, the, the 2016 zoning code is an incremental step in that direction to, to move us towards renewables and to facilitate or encourage replacement of old tanks with safer tanks. That's not the end game. The end game at the city policy level is to get us off fossil fuels eventually. And I think that the conversation here is about how fast can we do that and what are the best tactics to do that. We've our actions that just from a decision making point of view, have been to kind of consolidate our policy gains that we've that we've tried to push forward so far because they're still under litigation. And I think we're, you know, sometimes in this venue, we're hesitant to talk the legal tactics because that might be an executive session kind of thing, since some of the plaintiffs could be in the room. But so that's the that's our thought process around the big picture.
78 Thanks.
79 Councilor Morillo.
80 Thank you. On January 17th, there was a street roots article by jeremiah hayden that says that street roots had asked the city on January 8th, 10th, 14th and 16th if it could provide documentation showing the city approved the construction. Dick find zenith for and when it became aware of the new construction, they say that the city was unable to provide that documentation and that the answer that they were given as journalists was that the city was generally aware that zenith was going to be, you know, changing its operations and building new things, but that they never received that documentation earlier. You said that that after those changes, there were permits that were given. As a city councilor, I would love to see what permits those were when they were issued, because I think it's really important for us to get this timeline right, because if it turns out that zenith has been changing their operations, I would expect that we would hold a company to account that if they're changing their operations, they have to get a new permit for those changing operations. Right. That should be standard practice.
81 That's correct.
82 Okay. I would love to see those permits right after this meeting.
83 Yeah, we can certainly provide those councilor.
84 Thank you. And councilor With one there's one slight caveat. There are things that are not governed by the city that would go through the state. So if there's issues that the state has with the with the facility, those would be outside of our, our line of sight. But generally, given things that are within the city's jurisdiction. Absolutely.
85 Yeah. Just to elaborate on that, the pressure piping is regulated by the state of Oregon boiler and pressure vessel law. So that's not those particular items. Wouldn't be something that city of Portland has records of.
86 Okay. Thank you.
87 Councilor Kanal.
88 Thank you. Good morning. Thanks for being here. So just a quick statement that I have four questions. I'll try to I think they're kind of related generally. I agree with councilor Morillo about the unacceptability, and I don't want to pile on here, but I do want to say this not only for you, but for the scheduling process from the administrative side for how work sessions are done. These are not as effective as they can be. And I want that's why I'm saying it, even though it's been said by two colleagues already. I also agree with councilor Zimmermann's comments about the level and comprehensiveness of this presentation, and also about having attorneys up here during work sessions. Dc olivera, you said that you felt that zenith was on track to meet the commitments that you noted, based on the last review you received. Then councilor Novick asked that if they were actually on track, how we how we knew that. And you deferred that question to zenith. My question is if first question is if we're unable to say why we think they're on track, why why are you willing to say that in the presentation itself?
89 Thank you for the question, councilor. Just for clarification, I was focused on the their permit to remove eight of the tanks. So that's eight towards the 30 they have on their website. And in a subsequent report they gave to us shown there, there's the beginning to switch off of fossil fuels. Is that are they at their goals. No. The other thing I want to flag is the conditions in the lux are technically tentative because that lux has not been realized. So we're also speaking speculatively about so would be if are they meeting the goals if that lux is actually approved. So largely speaking it's a it's nuanced. But what they said they were going to do, they've started to do. And assuming that lux is approved and the state grants their air permit, which also is a is a thing that needs to be finalized, then yes, we would take a hard look specifically. And just as a reminder, the it's a the lux is a compatibility statement that lets the state know that their use is allowable by the city. Those conditions are voluntary commitments that the facility is making that we're going to hold them to. But that process is largely going to be in partnership with the state. So there's a there's an enforcement element that is still being developed with the state of Oregon on that, specifically deq. But again, everything we've seen to date has given us somewhat confidence that they are going to meet the goals that they've set out.
90 Thank you. You had mentioned a briefing for us in March and some pre briefings as well. But I also saw that in response to councilor Novick question that you you felt a need to try to meet a deadline which applies to zenith and not us, which is February 4th, which for those who don't know, is one day before the next city council meeting. I that is coincidental, I know, but just notable, I think. How do we know that we're how can councilors know that after this this work session and the listening session, what confidence should we have that that this is not going to just be issued by February 4th and that that on February 5th and beyond? We're just going to be told here's the thing we did and it's too late to change it. How can we be confident that that will not happen.
91 If we if we if staff determined that based on zenith's submission, that the lux was valid, meaning it had. Yes. And we chose not to submit that to the state, we'll have to defer to legal council's opinion on on the repercussions of that action. So at this point, transactionally speaking, if zenith has applied and staff who have, you know, been working on it are prepared to provide a decision based on our existing zoning code to tell them to go against our existing zoning code would put us at legal risk, but I would defer to, you know, city council or, excuse me, city attorney's office on that.
92 Okay. And just a related point to that, you mentioned that in 2021, executive authority was sufficient at that point to compel the staff to operate in a certain way. Is that still true? Now, could the mayor do something like that today, or the city administrator, something like what commissioner Ryan did then?
93 I would defer to the city attorney. But that's my understanding that it's an administrative action. Yeah.
94 Okay. Thanks. Okay. So my two sort of direct policy questions first, apologies. I was a couple minutes late. I came from the Portland fire and rescue swearing in. And so my question relates to fire because we're not only putting the decisions we make not only affect the lives of the folks who live near those areas, but obviously firefighters as well. What, if anything, is the city doing to mitigate fire risk around this and around the city generally?
95 Yeah. Great question. Councilor. I obviously we're here from permitting and planning, so I want to defer that question to public safety. And we've invited them to participate with us in March to talk about the cei and fire risk. Okay.
96 Thanks. And then finally, I wanted to understand what the timeline from a staff perspective is for sort of ongoing review. I know that the comprehensive plan can be amended by city council. It says it in the document. I also know that code is zoning code is code. But in terms of sort of a general review timeline or any specific timeline in terms of proposals from staff for that, are any in the pipeline, when can we reasonably expect that that would happen under without a specific request to do so?
97 Just for clarification around changing the comp plan or changing zoning code or both.
98 Yeah, I mean separately, if however, it's helpful to answer that and break it down.
99 Yeah, I could I could reply to that. The in general, the slide described the sequence that we go through when we're amending the zoning code or the comp plan, which is, you know, staff research, public involvement has to go to the hearings before the planning commission and then eventually back to the council through a committee or directly as you choose that process. Typically it varies in time, but it's the public involvement is typically a couple months of process to make the give the public an opportunity to weigh in. Research is typically a couple of months of process, and there are minimum requirements for hearing timelines and public notice for council and the planning commission. So, you know, 6 to 18 months is a typical process for a fast legislative process.
100 And one thing I'll just add, councilor is especially for things that are going to be contested or, or just we have the likelihood of legal challenge, the amount of time staff have to do the findings to ensure that we can justify the policy decisions is very important. It kind of makes it an appeal proof, but strengthens our decision point so that in the event that we are appealed, that we can, you know, stand up and be victorious in that space. So something like this, you know, we could rush it, but we'd always want to be mindful. We'd be putting ourselves at risk. Just anecdotally speaking, we've gotten processes to council in, you know, eight months from beginning to concept to council vote, which for I think a land use is a pretty a pretty impressive speed. But that's just something to contemplate is just the tighter we the faster we go, the more likelihood we have for.
101 And I would just remind everyone that we're still in litigation over the 2016 zoning code changes we made. And that came back to council three times before it was affirmed, at least at the state level.
102 So just.
103 To clarify the question, that's helpful to know how long it takes is there. Let me reframe the question. Is there a regular cadence at which this council can expect staff proposals to revise these documents? Either of them.
104 The specific or in general.
105 The comprehensive plan and the zoning code?
106 Yeah. Go ahead.
107 Yeah. There is a state cadence of roughly once every decade to do a more comprehensive overhaul of the comprehensive plan. And then we typically bring the council, you know, half a dozen proposals each year that are either area specific plans or, or topic specific planning documents that may amend both the zoning code and the comprehensive plan. So you typically get multiple opportunities each year to amend different elements. But it is unusual and fairly long between comprehensive overhauls.
108 There's no there's no explicit cadence that, you know, twice a year, this council will contemplate title 33 changes. It's largely a directive of leadership. You all can come, you know, direct us to take on, you know, evaluation of any area of the comp plan or title 33. So it's largely at the need of what we're seeing. For example, last year, we largely focused on in the last couple of years how to streamline housing production. And so a lot of our title 33 processes were focused on that. For example.
109 Our work plan is typically a combination of things the council's asked us to do and things that are mandated from state level, such as the middle housing legislation that we've we've evolved over recent years. Thank you.
110 Councilor, Novick and Morillo. I hope you hear that call from your fellow councilor to potentially have a broader look at our zoning and planning. Councilor Smith.
111 Thank you, madam president. Thank you, mr. Oliveros. I need some clarity here. Back in the fall, candidate Tiffany Koyama Lane and Angelita Morillo from district three and Mitch Green and Olivia Clark, they sent a letter, a signed letter expressing their concerns about zenith and my staffer. He put together a memo for me and basically said that this letter indicated that these future councilors would take a second look at zenith land use permit once in office. And this is the background information that we just got from you earlier this morning. And it said that the new council's limited administrative oversight may complicate their involvement in this decision. So the clarity that I'm asking for is now, do we have any do we have any administrative oversight? Can we change this? Can we urge a different response than what staff is preparing for us, or is this just a board briefing? Because I want to be clear so that people know what our our responsibilities are and or what we can do, because it seems like we keep going over this. And if we don't have any administrative or legislative ability to change staff's decision or to make this decision, and why would we even be taking a vote on it? So that is my question to you.
112 Thank you for the question, councilor. This space we're in is a work session. So there's no action expected.
113 But you had talked about a vote that that was going to come before city council.
114 No.
115 Maybe I misunderstood.
116 I believe that's on some broader land use conversations.
117 Okay.
118 Yeah. Yeah.
119 So that's why I want to be clear about this. If we have the ability to change the staff's recommendation or to give additional information, that would basically say that this is not something that we want to do. So I just want to know what where we're at.
120 Thank you for the question, councilor. So the space we're in today was, was created because councilors Green and councilor Zimmermann met with mayor wilson, and mayor wilson agreed that it was would be useful for you all to get just a background on the history of zenith, the lux before us, and sort of begin to outline the decision points, existing or not, that this council has related to those things for this particular moment, as we currently understand from a policy perspective and legal perspective, the decision about the lux rests with the administration. Full stop.
121 Thank you. Full stop. And that is perfect because for me, I'm getting emails from folks who think that we have the ability to stop this. And if we don't, we need to make it very clear that we don't, as a body, have the ability to do this. But just so that, you know, and you've heard very clearly today that many of us have some concerns about what our answer is going to be and how we respond. And I think it's so important for you to always say that I know you're being nice and you're dancing around the issue, but clarity is critical. Clarity is important so that we can be deliberate, and so that I can be truthful to the people who send me emails about this. And I can say, I don't have a vote on this. I can't determine the outcome on this. And so that would be very helpful. So this is just a work session and a board briefing of what has happened in the past. Just to be clear to people who are watching this on tv that we don't have a vote on this.
122 Correct.
123 Thank you. Okay.
124 Thank you.
125 Councilor Clark. And for other councilors, I think everybody has had a chance to speak at least once. We may get one other speaker in after this, but I want to make sure we have time for our panels as well.
126 Thank you, madam president. I guess I just want to express my frustration with this. It's been a great presentation. I think I'm slightly beyond the third grade level, but it was still a lot for us to, to take in. But I want to also address my fellow councilors that this is also about really conflicting policies that we have, whether it's our renewable energy future, whether it's the comp plan and our concerns around disaster resilience, whether it's serving economic future, economic needs. There are a lot of conflicting policies. And I don't think this is the last time that we're going to confront that. So we do need that bigger picture conversation with you, that bigger mapping of what's coming at us from all different angles. Aside from the very specifics about this issue, and I am interested in knowing more, riffing off of councilor Smith, what are the levers that we do have into the future here? What are and what are the trade offs? Because we do have conflicting policies. This is not the last time this will come up. So thank you very much.
127 Councilor Koyama Lane, I think we have time. Did you want to go? Go ahead.
128 I'm echoing some of what I'm hearing up here from councilor Zimmermann, Clark and Smith that like an overarching I think we need some clarity on what the levers are and what's possible. How can we be responding to our constituents? How can we protect our constituents? What lies with the county? I'm also just seeing something that came comes up a lot, which is I think constituents feel frustrated when it feels like it's finger pointing and it's like, no, that's not ours. So some clarity on on what we can actually do would be helpful. And as a third grade teacher, I think bringing things down to a third grade level is not like dumbing anything down. But I will say, like my staffer sat with me before this and briefed me and like drew me some pictures and it was really helpful. I think sometimes we need we need some of that to be really clear. And it's not doesn't mean we aren't smart. So like thinking about that specifically, like in 2022 from what was drawn for me by my staffer. So zenith was getting lobbied or zenith was lobbying city officials for a lux they had they were allowed to be working. That was specific to docks. We found out that actually there was stuff going on with pipes. I'm doing this because this is like the actual drawing that he showed me, and then that connects to deq's. The fine that they got that was like less than 60 days ago. Is that correct? In November 2024 that they were working outside of that scope? Do I have that correct?
129 I'm trying to follow the hand signals here, so maybe I missed something, but yes, deq because they were lobbied by the community, not the other way around. So deq then went out and saw that the operations had exceeded what was allowed under their permit.
130 Okay.
131 So that's why a new lux was required.
132 Yeah. City officials were being lobbied by zenith in 2022. By the community, not by.
133 I think this is about the approval of the lux.
134 So approval. Oh, approval of the lux. I'm sorry. Yes.
135 And then. Okay. And then I think I heard you say something about like around the pipes. That's more in the state's jurisdiction.
136 Great question. Some of it is within the state's jurisdiction. So some of the permits that we have in our purview are mandated by or covered by a Portland permitting and development. There are aspects of the piping that fall under the state's jurisdiction.
137 And then I heard councilor Morillo talking about the reporting that showed that there was at least one city planner that didn't know about these pipes, that they weren't included in written analysis by the city. Like, was that intentional? Who directed this action? I think there's a piece that, like, it just feels confusing, like there's different information. It's hard to map this out sometimes. It's not might not be intentional, but it can feel a little bit like it's confusing for a reason. But I think we do need it to be like really simplified and explained because like the answer like that's a that's a state jurisdiction thing that doesn't really like our voters. Our constituents don't care about that. They're like, we don't care if it's city or metro or state. Like we need to make sure that we're on the same page and we have the same information.
138 Yeah, no, that's a great point. And this is complex. And so I apologize that this was very high level. I mean, even for staff this there's a lot that goes into this. So for you all and others there's only so much that you know that you can understand without giving, you know, the experience that staff have dealing with this issue. Yes, certainly we can try to lay this out in more layman's terms, so to speak. But there are a lot of different parties that play into this. The fire department is one of them that was mentioned previously. There's a lot to this. And so as much as we tried to provide a high level overview, I hear what you're asking for is some specificity around the permits and who's responsible for all of them and how that all plays into, you know, this process.
139 We need to move on to our other panels, our next group up is a presentation from zenith. We will only have 20 minutes for this panel, so we're not going to be able to take all of the questions, but we will figure out a way to get questions batched. To follow up, I believe we have grady reamer, carlos munguia, jt hendrix and allison reynolds coming up, and I'm hoping we didn't just no, we didn't. For folks from our bureaus, I think it would be helpful to get along with the follow up to the questions that you were asked, specifically, a integrated timeline that shows the various timelines you put up on different slides together so we can see how the whole process went, as well as some information very clearly about what the next steps in the process are for this lux, but also what else you expect to have forthcoming in terms of applications from zenith. And perhaps our panelists here can help you put together that piece of it so that we understand what the decision points are, who is in charge of those decision points, and where council intersects or does not. That second piece, preferably in a format we can share with members of the public as well. Thank you for being here today. I'm not sure which of you is leading this presentation. Perfect.
140 Thank you.
141 And please make sure you all introduce yourselves as you get started for us. Thank you.
142 So good morning. Thank you. Thank you, everybody, for allowing us to be here. My name is grady riemer. I'm the chief commercial officer for zenith energy. Colleagues, carlos murguia. He's our chief operations officer, jt hendricks. He's our Portland terminal manager. And allison reynolds is our land use attorney. With still, reeves, we appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. We're looking to provide a clear understanding of our operations, how we ensure a safe operation for our employees, our customers, our neighbors, Portland and the region. Lastly, we'll be touching on our energy, our role in energy transition. A terminal operator needs to evaluate and address all potential environmental risks, including seismic vulnerability. We have done that. We understand the concern of what happens when the big one comes. Among, among other things, we will discuss in detail the seismic assessments that independent third parties have conducted our terminal. With that, please, please flip to page one. So who is the who is zenith? We're a terminal owner and operator. We do not own products, nor do we dictate the demand of fuels. Our customers bring products to the Portland terminal to meet the demand of consumers. We are the largest storage provider of renewable fuels in the pacific northwest. We receive products that customers deliver to the Portland terminal by rail trucks and marine vessels. We store that product and we then deliver it to trucks or vessels as directed by our customers. We are proud of what we have accomplished thus far. We believe in safety, environmental stewardship and compliant operations. Our facility has had zero reportable releases or spills. Why is this Portland terminal? Oregon has limited production of renewable fuels such as renewable diesel, so renewable fuels must be imported to this market because there are no pipelines that deliver renewable fuels to Oregon. Renewable fuels are delivered by rail cars, trucks and marine vessels. Zenith is the only major rail facility in the market capable of handling the renewable fuels that meet oregon's demand. In fact, the neighboring terminals have storage contracts with us because their facilities lack the proper infrastructure to bring the renewable fuels to market. As an example of the role we play, our customers bring renewable diesel in by rail or marine vessels, where it is then stored at our terminal and then distributed by our customers to end users like TriMet. What is driving the demand for renewable fuels? Local and state climate related programs are premised on renewable fuel supply. Renewable fuels are largely drop in fuels that can have an immediate impact. Decarbonizing the transportation sector. Zenith is legally obligated to cease handling and storing crude oil, and is committed to supplying renewable fuels to the region. Zenith is very much aligned with both the city and state, as we all do our part in energy transition. We're the only terminal to legally give up its right to handle its largest fossil fuel product. We've invested millions of dollars on the infrastructure needed to bring renewable diesel, biodiesel, and the 100% renewable sustainable aviation fuel component to Portland. Based on all contracts signed to date, over 66% of our storage capacity will be in renewable fuels. Page two please. Here's a quick overview of products that we currently handle at our facility. Renewable fuels includes renewable diesel. Thank you. Renewable fuels include renewable diesel, biodiesel and the 100% renewable sustainable aviation fuel component. Fossil fuels include crude oil, which is declining and comes to an end before October 2027. Ulsd, which is petroleum, diesel and aviation gasoline, which currently supplies smaller regional airports and emergency aircraft. We've heard claims that zenith is making up a fake product called sustainable aviation fuel, or saf, and I can assure you that is not the case. The port of Portland wants to bring saf to pdx as soon as possible. Sustainable aviation fuel is an approximate 50 over 50 blend of conventional jet fuel and the 100% renewable, sustainably sustainable aviation fuel component. This is currently the only renewable fuel option to decarbonize the aviation industry. Unlike electric vehicles, there are no electric airplanes. Our plan is to enable jet fuel to be moved on new infrastructure. This is key to being able to blend it with the 100% renewable saf component and having a certified sustainable aviation fuel and deliver it via pipeline to pdx. This will not increase the usage of jet fuel, as I know everybody understands the usage of jet fuel, like all fuels, is driven by demand for the fuel. Zenith does not dictate the demand of jet fuel at pdx. This is purely driven by consumers and the overall state of the economy. Lastly, bottom right, as you can see, our year over year renewable fuel volumes have increased in our crude oil volumes have decreased. This transition is attributed to a couple facts one. Being able to invest in renewable fuel infrastructure decreases our overall capabilities of handling crude oil. Two working with our oil customer to transition tanks from oil service to renewable diesel well ahead of the October 2027 deadline.
143 Good morning. My name is carlos mcgee. I'm the chief operations officer for zenith energy. Just want to echo grady's comments. We understand and appreciate the community's concern with seismic vulnerability of the critical energy infrastructure hub. So zenith has hired Portland area, professionally licensed engineering firms such as nv5 and power's engineering to perform multiple site specific vulnerability assessments of our terminal. We did 1 in 2020, 2022 and 2024, the first one being done before senate bill 1587 was enacted. The professional engineers that we hired are all registered by the state of Oregon. Professionally licensed engineers either stamp or seal documents or drawings. Once they stamp that drawing or that document, that work product is considered in the eyes of the authorizing agencies, the account of that professional engineer. So engineers do not stamp. Professional engineers do not stamp work product or they do not take it lightly, I should say potential seismic events that we assess included a 9.0 magnitude cascadia subduction zone event, the geotechnical geotechnical engineers took soil borings and cone penetration tests throughout the site, and you can see that aerial to the right of the slide, the orange circles that show where we did the subsurface examinations throughout our terminal in 2022, the city and Multnomah county commissioned econo. Excuse me, aecom, northwest salish, resilience and enduring econometrics to perform a study of seismic events and the cei and potential spills. And that final report, the author stated that, you know, their their study was high level. They did assumptions of soil conditions, and the only way to really get precise understanding of what would happen in a seismic event was to do actual subsurface examination of the site, which is what we did. We also examined the structural integrity of all our in-service storage tanks, the building's containment berms, the piping and pipe support structures. All the assessments were done per the Oregon structural specialty code and the American petroleum institute standard 650. Our seismic vulnerability assessments have been submitted to the deq and the city of Portland, and will make them all available soon to our website. So key findings of the seismic vulnerability assessments. Our professional engineers determined that the terminal poses low risk in connection with seismic events, including a 9.0 magnitude cascadia subduction event. The storage tanks are stable against seismic induced forces and will withstand sliding, overturning shelf stresses and sloshing of the product. The sliding is basically the tank sliding off its foundation. Overturning is due to the sloshing of the product inside the tank, while the ground is shaking, and shelf stresses are any forces that might break the shell. Liquefaction. Liquefaction is caused when you have water either at the surface or right below the surface. As the ground starts to shake due to the earthquake, that water gets pushed up into the soil, and when that happens, the soil will lose some of its strength. Liquefaction induced settlement is completed at our terminal to be between 4 to 9in across a 50 foot distance, and that's considered by the engineers a low risk to large diameter storage tanks and similar large structures. Our containment dike walls are appropriately responsive to the spill risk identified by the assessments. Lateral spreading and lateral spreading is basically horizontal movement of soil, typically against a water body. So in this case we would get the area would see some lateral spreading along the bank of the Willamette river. But lateral spreading is not considered a safety hazard for our site. The warehouses and buildings are not at risk of collapse or lateral spreading, and you can see the pie chart there to the lower right. All of our in-service tanks have been assessed for seismic vulnerability, and we will not bring any out of service tank into service without first doing a seismic evaluation of that tank before it goes into service. Next slide. So what we do to ensure tank safety. For our storage tanks, we follow two standards, primarily the American petroleum institute which is abbreviated api. They're the trade organization for the oil and gas industry. And they create standards that the industry follows. And these standards are regularly updated. We follow api standards. 653 for maintenance, inspection, modification and repairs of existing storage tanks. We also follow api standards. 650 when it comes to addressing seismic evaluations, api 653 inspections are conducted by certified third party inspectors who perform external inspections every five years. Full internal I'm sorry, full external inspections every five years. Full internal inspections every 10 to 20 years. And we also conduct monthly visual inspections by our zenith operators. And if you can see there to the right of the slide is a typical report we would receive from a third party inspection company. To the right of that page you'll see the seal of the professional engineer who reviews the report. And to the left are the credentials of the certifying certified tank inspector. Typically, when we inspect a tank, we'll do full thickness scans of the tank bottom, the shell, the roof where the floor is welded to the shell, as well as inspection of the foundations. Once the inspections are completed, we'll do repairs. Examples of repairs as needed would be repairs to the roof. The bottom. The tank shell will replace any thinning steel. We'll also hire a certified third party inspector to come back and perform a post repair inspection. After the repairs are done, and after we've completed the inspections. And the repair of the tank is structurally equivalent to a new tank. So for our Portland terminal, all of our in-service tanks currently satisfy api 653 and all of our assessments, as noted earlier, were done per api 650 standards. And with that, I'll turn it over to jt hendricks, our terminal manager.
144 Thank you carlos. Good morning everyone. As you said, my name is jt hendricks. I'm the terminal manager here for the zenith facility in Portland. Born and raised Oregonian myself, along with the other folks down there at Portland, have a have a local vested interest in protecting our local community environment. You know, we have family wage jobs with with good benefits. We proudly utilize local union contractors to complete facility projects and maintenance there at the terminal. First off, I'd like to talk a little bit about, oh, I'm sorry, I can go to the next slide too. Sorry. There we go. First of all, I'd like to talk a little bit about containment and some of our safety aspects there at the facility. Every tank has containment around it and it's consisting of concrete walls, earthen berms to keep the potential releases contained within the terminal. That picture to the right, there is a good example of one of our containment walls, the concrete containment wall. That that one's just over nine feet. So just for just for visual purposes there seismic assessments as carlos spoke to performed on these containments concluded that the containment is code compliant. For example, that containment wall will perform well under shaking and post shaking cases. These containments in the picture to the left, they'll you'll see the overview of the facility. Those red those red outlines is the containment containment walls around those around those tanks as well as our our rail offloading rack there at the top of the screen. These containments can contain over 533 million, sorry, 533,000 barrels on site. I showed you the picture of that. Some of the safety investments that zenith that we've done is we made we have a state of the art fire, fire suppression system that includes a 6500 gallon tank, which is second only largest to the airport here in Portland. And in addition to that, we've also invested in marine vapor combustion system. Next slide please. So in addition to our comprehensive employee training we all have systems. We also have systems in place such as continuous tank level monitoring, high level alarms and overfill protection. All of our all of our marine movements and transfers are continuously staffed at the dock, along with continuous radio communication to the vessels at all times. We have multiple daily, multiple daily inspections that are performed throughout every shift at the terminal to inspect all of our all of our infrastructure, every every year, there are multiple scheduled and unannounced unannounced government inspections, including those from the EPA, the deq, united states coast guard, federal rail association, Oregon department of transportation, along with others. We also conduct annual annual drills and that for potential spills, including a worst case scenario drill every third year, which the EPA, deq and coast guard both participate and evaluate. The picture. The picture down there in the in the bottom right with those folks on the water, those are those are boom deployment drills that we perform twice a year. We actually received an award in 2020 for having the third fastest time amongst companies in the region, which is something we're very proud of. We take these deployments seriously and we look forward to doing them every year that that other picture you see that that boom, that boom that's laying in the water. So that that's what they would call containment boom. So those are we practice we use those these those equipment. We practice with that so that we can be efficient if we ever need to ever need to use them. Zenith also has we have policies and plans in place, including a spill prevention, control and countermeasure plan, which is governed by EPA, requires oil spill prevention, preparedness and response to prevent possible discharges to navigable waters. We have a facility response plan or an frp required and approved by deq, which also demonstrates the facilities preparedness. As I mentioned, we drill on that annually. The facility response plan itself. We have an earthquake earthquake response plan, including the shutdown of operations, inspections for spills and damage. Post-earthquake, we have emergency shutdown procedures, automated pumps and valves that can be shut down, closed at the push of a button by our control room operators. We are a proud member of the clean river co-op, which is a non nonprofit oil spill response organizations provide mutual aid and rapid response. Zenith also maintains all all financial assurance required by federal and state laws. Thank you for your time. I'll turn it back to grady.
145 Okay. There you go. Thank you. In closing, I would just like to reiterate a few points. Our local operations team, led by jt, they're from the area and like zenith, are dedicated to continuing operations that are safe to both the environment and community. We operate in a highly regulated industry with lots of local, state and federal agency oversight. We are transparent and strive to have a good working relationship with all agencies. Zenith has spent considerable time and resources engaging with third party, seismic and geotechnical professional engineers, who have determined our facility is seismically sound and low risk. The terminal is routinely inspected by third parties to ensure sound asset integrity. Repairs are made as needed. 40% of carbon emissions in the Portland region are from the transportation sector, as stated by Portland, the state of Oregon and the port of Portland decarbonize decarbonizing the transportation and aviation sectors. Critical. This can be done immediately using renewable liquid fuels. Again, thank you all for your time. There's an appendix that follows with more, more detail of what we discussed. And, you know, happy to answer questions.
146 Councilor I'd like to make sure we get a few questions in. I also don't want to cut short our time with our next panel, so we may bump into our lunch break a little bit in order to do both. Councilor Novick go right ahead.
147 Two quick questions. One, your chart showed that you reduced handling of crude oil by 950,000 barrels between 2023 and 2024. You wanted to like what was the starting point and what do you expect over the next few years?
148 So I think for 2023, we had around 9 million barrels of oil coming through the facility for 2024. It was, you know, roughly 8 million barrels, almost almost a million barrels less coming through the facility. Our, you know, our contract with our crude oil customer goes through October 2027, which is why our that's our date to transition out of oil service. They are also one of the largest producers of renewable diesel in the us. So one of the things that led to the decline from 23 to 24 is our ability to work with them to ahead of the October 2027 deadline. They've already, you know, in addition to us taking eight of the railcar spots out of oil service, we've also worked with them to take an 80,000 barrel tank out of oil service, which happened in early 2024. They converted that tank to renewable diesel service, and then they just signed a significant renewable diesel contract that's going to come online in December of 2025. That will also be displacing some some foreign barrels that were coming into the Portland market that were supplying end users like TriMet.
149 So does that mean that they you expect the 8 million to continue to go down to below that level before they you're all before stopping in 2027?
150 So we can't say that for certainty. But I think that's that's our expectation is over the next, next couple of years that we'll continue to see, see decline in volumes, especially as they as they begin to bring on more renewable fuels to the region.
151 Okay. Thank you. My other question is about sustainable aviation fuel. I like just did some googling around and discovered that there are a number of, you know, respected environmental organizations that endorse the idea of sustainable aviation fuel because you said we're not electrifying the whole aviation fleet anytime soon. But like nrdc's website says, there's sustainable and there's sustainable and there's some fuel that they think actually is sustainable and other that might be allegedly renewable but isn't really much help. Can you point to? Is the fuel that you're planning to use to produce? Does it come with like a seal of approval for energy from nrdc or any other similar organization?
152 It's so. Yes, so the right now, the right now, the 100% renewable sustainable aviation component coming to our facility is coming from from one location in kind of the great plains area. And it comes it comes in on rail to our facility. Their their production is approved by the EPA as well as the department of energy. They've recently received a pretty significant grant to expand their sustainable aviation fuel production. But, you know, there's other facilities that are coming, coming online, you know, in the bay area of california, there's two former refineries that were converted to produce both renewable diesel and saf. And we'll expect to see that both at saf and from from california, move on vessels to, to supply the Portland area. But but yes, all all the all the sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel in terms of, you know, what's sustainable, not approved by by the state of Oregon, I think is I think it's I think there's pathways listed at the deq's website under the clean fuels program. Thank you.
153 Councilor Kanal.
154 Thank you. Thank you for being here. I have two clarifications and then two policy questions. So just I'll ask the first two together because I think they might be quick. One, you had mentioned that over 66% of storage capacity will be in renewable fuels, and I just wanted to get a buy win on that. And then the other question is, does a contract or any written agreement exist with the port of Portland regarding sustainable aviation, aviation fuel at present?
155 Okay. Great question. So the 66% to be clear, that is based on what we currently have contracted today. And that's on that's on a forward looking basis. So I referenced a large contract coming online in December of 2025. So that's looking at all the contracts that we have today taking those tanks that are mostly out of service and others being converted. Looking at those, you know, we're at 66%. So our expectation let me let me take a step back. The past 12, 14 months has been a very tough market for renewable fuels, especially especially in Oregon when the when the climate protection program got got rolled back at the court level, you know, that that that put the Oregon market for renewable fuel supply at an extreme disadvantage compared to california. So everything we've been able to do to bring in a sizable amount of renewable fuels to, to Oregon, to Portland, specifically, has been in a very tough, economical environment for renewable fuels. So we're very excited about now that cpp is back in place at the state level, we're very excited about what those opportunities are to come from, come from that, and we expect to see, you know, that 66% increase even even quicker or even even even higher. But I think your question, I think your question was when will, when will when will it grow by what's the deadline? Our deadline is to be out of the oil service by October of 2027. So no matter what, you know, by October 2027, every one of those tanks is out of oil service and there's no more oil inside our facility. And to which point, I mean, even before then, you know, we're still working with with a lot of commercial interests to bring in the sustainable aviation fuel component, because right now we can't bring in the jet fuel to. So we can't we can't blend the jet fuel and get it to pdx via pipeline. We're looking to bring in additional renewable diesel supply to supply all of the Oregon market from both Portland down, down and through eugene, which those two, you know, those two cities can supply roughly 90% of Oregon with their with their fuels. As it relates to your second question on pdx, there is no agreement with pdx, pdx does not. Pdx does not own the own. The fuel that comes into the terminal. So there's I'm sorry to the to the airport. There's a there's a fuel consortium that supplies the fuel to the airport. Our customer who brings in the sustainable aviation fuel fuel component. So what we currently do is we load that product, it comes in on rail cars, gets stored in our facility, and then it goes outbound on ships and barges to where it sails to other major west coast cities, to where it gets blended with jet fuel, and then it gets pipelined to, you know, lax, sfo, seatac. When we have the ability to do the blending here in Portland, that's going to make the fuel stay in in, in the Portland market. And once we have the ability to deliver it to pdx.
156 Yeah.
157 Just a clarification on that. You mentioned that all three of those other airports it's by pipeline is the intention to do the same thing here.
158 Yes. So back to our our lux submittal. Our intention is to there's an existing pipeline that connects to another facility that owns the pipeline that delivers fuel to, delivers jet fuel to, to the airport. So once we have the ability to, you know, that's why we need the ability to move the blended saf on new infrastructure, because we need the new infrastructure that ties into the existing line that we're able to supply the jet fuel system, which can then is the only jet fuel system that supplies pdx.
159 Okay, I for time, I will skip one of the two and just say on slide seven, you mentioned that climate related programs need a Portland terminal. In your opinion, why are most of the climate activists in Portland so opposed to your operations here then?
160 That's that's a very fair question. I think there's extreme misunderstanding about about our operation, about about who zenith, who who zenith is, what we do, what products we handle, and our commitment to energy transition. You know, when zenith. So zenith when zenith acquired the previous owner of this facility, there were legacy oil contracts in place. And we've worked with previous city council members, the mayor before to, you know, it started out bringing, you know, the very first oil contract that zenith inherited was bringing heavy, heavy canadian crude into the Portland market. You know, the previous mayor had told us that he did not like that. That's not what he wanted for Portland. We worked with our customer to stop bringing in heavy canadian crude. Then they started bringing in other lighter crudes. It's kind of same thing. You know, he did not he did not want that product leaving for export to other foreign countries. So we worked with our customer to pull pull that out of the contract just to keep it for kind of west coast distribution, especially movements to Washington, where it gets where it gets refined and the product gets sent back on a pipeline to Portland market. So, you know, we understand the concerns people have about about handling crude oil here in this market, which is why we made the commitment. You know, again, I don't think it's I don't think it's well understood. But our commitment to get out of crude oil in October, by October of 2027 is a legal commitment, binding commitment that we have. It's in our luxe, our luxe that was issued in 2022, and it's a condition that's going to be in our our new air permit as well. So come after October 2027, if we are handling oil in our inside our facility, we're violating two very significant issued permits. Thank you.
161 I'm going to upset a few of my colleagues because we're going to have to cut people off. I apologize, but councilor Morillo, why don't you ask the last question for us here?
162 Thank you. I have one quick question and then one slightly longer one. What earthquake level do the containment walls protect us from? You said they protect us. You know that they will withstand shaking. But there wasn't a specific earthquake level that I saw listed.
163 What level? What level was that? Seismic study.
164 I'm sorry. Can you repeat the question?
165 You said that the. There are containment walls that would protect us in the case of a spill can or, you know, an earthquake. And I'm wondering what level of earthquake that containment wall can actually withstand, specifically.
166 The risk category.
167 You called it a containment wall in your. Yeah, correct.
168 I'm sorry, are you asking what level of earthquake or what risk category?
169 Councilor Morillo I believe in the presentation, it was noted that the studies were examining a 9.0 magnitude cascadia subduction zone earthquake. So is that responsive to your question?
170 Yeah, that that that 9.0 study was for all infrastructure on the facility. Okay. So that test was not applied to just tanks but containment walls, piping pipe supports everything else.
171 Yeah, I apologize, I misunderstood your question. Yeah.
172 That's okay I appreciate you.
173 All the assessments were to include that cascadia 9.0 magnitude earthquake.
174 Okay. And the second question I have is that zenith has changed some of its operations with expanding pipes and, you know, doing other work than they had in their original permit. So I'm curious, when you knew that you wanted to expand or change some of your operations, did you contact the city and state to inform us of these changes? And did you get a permit before starting renovations on the pipes and other operations? And who were the people that you contacted at the city and state to get that worked out and approved?
175 So the work and we'll we'll specifically address the 2021 mccall improvements. That project involved replacing existing aboveground piping. The terminals were already connected. That piping was used to transport asphalt. We replace that existing piping with new piping to be able to handle the renewable fuels. No land use approvals were needed for the work. As far as construction permits we've been discussing, we started discussing permitting of projects with then bureau of development service staff as early as 2018, when we assumed operation of the terminal bts staff and some fire department officials and some state regulators were involved in discussions, and they told us that the nature of that mechanical work was outside the scope of the building codes and did not require a permit. And we have correspondence to that effect where they stated to us that mechanical work and industrial facilities was not permit required construction.
176 And that was from city employees or state employees or both.
177 City both. Yeah.
178 Okay. Thank you.
179 Councilors, we need to move to our next panel. I think you've heard some requests for follow up. And I'd like to ask that when you get us follow up information, you also get us some additional information about your maximum current capacity. You had some numbers about barrels in your presentation, but not the maximum current capacity for us to understand that in context. Also what your renewable portfolio looks like in other sites. Are you 100% renewable anywhere or not? And if you could share with us any future plans that you are currently legally able to share, so that we have an understanding of what the future of this site looks like, that would be really helpful. Thank you for being here with us today. Councilor Green, would you like to introduce the next panel? I know you helped put together this panel. I appreciate your support.
180 I would love to. Thank you. Madam president. At this time I would love to invite, I think, all five panelists up to the it's not quite the dais, I guess the other side of the dais, simultaneously, we have aja decoteau, executive director of the columbia river inter-tribal fish commission. We have damon mott story, Oregon chapter director of the sierra club. We have nick caleb, staff attorney for breach collective. We have nancy heiser, a member of tank the tanks and the linnton neighborhood association, and kate murphy, senior community organizer for columbia riverkeeper.
181 Thank you. We will give this panel their full 20 minutes. I do want to stop us at 20 minutes, though, so that everybody has a chance to grab a quick ten minute bite to eat or take care of other needs. Return phone calls before we start our public testimony later.
182 Thank you and just kick us off. I would like to invite aja to go first. And before you go, I just want to say I thank you for coming here and giving comments today, but I don't want anyone in this room or watching online to be misconstrued that this is a substitute for tribal consultation. This is the bare minimum. Thank you.
183 Great. Thank you. Good morning. Mayor, council president and councilors, congratulations on your recent elections and beginning the exciting work of reinventing how the city is led and governed. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today. My name is aja decoteau. I am a citizen of the yakama nation, and I serve as the executive director for the columbia river inter-tribal fish commission, also known as cryptic. Cryptic was formed in 1977 by four sovereign tribal nations with federally reserved treaty fishing rights in the columbia basin. Cryptic is not an ngo. In fact, we are a political subdivision of the four tribes we represent, which includes the warm springs tribe of Oregon, the umatilla tribe, also of Oregon, the confederated tribes and bands of the yakama nation in Washington state, and the nez perce tribe in idaho. Each tribe signed treaties in 1855, reserving rights that they have held since time immemorial. Among these is the right to fish in all usual and accustomed places, which includes the Willamette river that flows through our city. These treaties reserved our rights to do what we have always done be good stewards of the land and the rivers where they live. So this sacred first food can sustain our culture today and for future generations. This is what it means to be white, what it means to be salmon people. This treaty, right, has been interpreted in federal court to make our four tribes co-managers of the salmon resource, along with the states and federal government critics, exists to ensure unified tribal voice in the overall management of the fishery resources and as managers to defend our treaty rights through the exercise of inherent sovereign powers of our member tribes. Where the salmon go, we go. We work throughout the columbia basin, from the headwaters in idaho to the river mouth in astoria. We employ scientists, fishery managers, enforcement officers, and legal and policy specialists. We follow our tribe's guiding visions for salmon restoration and energy development outlined in our tribal restoration plan called wakanami wa quisha light. The overarching goal of this plan isn't just to put back fish where they live. Equally important is to protect the watersheds where they live as well. This duty and obligation to do this work isn't just for our tribes. It's all of our responsibilities as residents of this place. Because salmon are the lifeblood of not only our tribal cultures, but of this entire region. Since our treaties are signed in 1855, salmon have faced many threats, from habitat loss to hydropower impacts to harvest impacts. Salmon today are just a shadow of their former numbers. Tribes, along with federal, state and municipal governments, ngos and private landowners have spent decades trying to reverse the decline of our region's iconic fish. But at every turn, there seems to be a new challenge. Today's work session topic has brought us together to discuss an issue that poses significant potential impacts to the river, to salmon, and to the tribal people who rely on these resources. Zenith's energy land use compatibility statement application cryptic has been involved in this discussion since the project was owned by arc terminals. Now, years later, tribes and tribal resources are still bearing the burden of these projects. This includes impacts to our fishers from fossil fuel transportation through our fishing sites, the threat of oil spills in the columbia river, tanker ships traveling through critically important columbia river estuary habitat, and finally, the effects of more carbon into the atmosphere. In its first land use compatibility statement denial, the city promised to engage in consultation with affected tribal governments. Despite this promise and the impacts of our tribal communities and resources, the city has not formally consulted with the affected tribes at any point in the city's decision making process. Today, with the new council and a new city governance structure, we have the opportunity to start anew and working together as partners. Together, we can build a positive relationship as governments to fulfill our obligations and duties, and beyond that, to stand together in our common goals, to protect rivers and natural resources that make our shared home special. Thank you, and we look forward to further discussion and consultation moving forward. Nice.
184 Thank you very much.
185 Thank you for that. And next up we have damon mott story.
186 Good morning. Mayor wilson, council president pirtle-guiney vice president Koyama Lane and Portland city councilors. I appreciate your attention on this matter, and I'm grateful for the invitation to speak. My name is damon.
187 Mott, and I'm the director of the sierra club's Oregon chapter, representing nearly 58,000 members and supporters statewide, including over 7800 active and engaged folks in the city of Portland. Our mission is to explore, enjoy, and protect the planet. We've been around since 1892, protecting over 10 million acres of wilderness, retiring 382 coal power plants, and establishing 467 parks and monuments. Many of the forests along the cascades crest, from mount hood down to california are protected, thanks to the efforts of early conservationists with the sierra club. I want to take a moment to note that this is a dark week for the environment. A second trump administration gravely threatens our climate and environmental justice. But last time, portlanders resisted trump's anti-environmental agenda by winning local victories such as the Portland clean energy community benefits fund in 2018. Today, we are not helpless. You have the power to make a difference in the fight for our future. A big piece of our responsibility now is doing our part to end the era of fossil fuels. Before fossil fuel dependency ends us. In addition to fueling climate change, transporting fossil fuels is dangerous and puts communities in danger without consent. In the town of mosier, one hour's drive east of here, an oil train derailed and exploded in the summer of 2016, spilling 42,000 gallons of bakken crude oil from north dakota next to the columbia river. The fireball ignited right by the mosier community school, where 160 students were evacuated. Here in Portland, highly dangerous fuels rattle along train tracks through our neighborhoods. More than one quarter of Multnomah county residents live within the half mile evacuation zone around oil transport lines, 108 schools and 100 childcare facilities are within that evacuation zone, and people of color in Portland are more likely to live in that evacuation zone than white people. So after the oil train fire in 2016, in mosier, residents here got really good at spotting that 1267 red placard number that marks crude oil train cars, many of which traveled to the zenith terminal. Zenith, for its part, has repeatedly lied and misled the public, regulators and elected leaders such as yourself. So when we hear that zenith is transitioning to renewable fuels, be skeptical, because these renewable fuels can be just as volatile and explosive, and may be as bad or worse for air quality and the climate. If there are faraway feedstocks that lead to deforestation and competition with food crop land use. In fact, research shows california's low carbon fuel standard, over 15 years old may be leading to an increase in carbon pollution by pumping credit money into capturing methane from factory farm livestock operations. And when we hear that zenith is pursuing a deal to give sustainable aviation fuel to the airport, let's be skeptical, because that deal is not guaranteed, and it would still be at least 50% conventional jet fuel. There are better pathways toward sustainable aviation fuel from Green hydrogen research, such as from the well-funded research hub for Green hydrogen right here in the pacific northwest. And we shouldn't count only on renewable diesel and other biofuels for the transition to clean energy. Electrification, not combustion of fuels, must be the primary approach for the future, and we don't need to count on a company with a bad track record to store and transload saf components. City leaders should scrutinize those who obscure their practices or violate the terms of their permits and agreements. And the bottom line is that the transition to renewable energy is already well underway. We don't need zenith in a city increasingly powered by clean electricity, electric and hybrid vehicles, and highly efficient electric hvac heat pumps as we fight to defend federal climate policies like the inflation reduction act from being rolled back by trump republicans, let's hold the line here in Portland and demand accountability from zenith energy. We have the power to change course, and it's up to us to do the right thing and insist upon clarity, consistency and a livable climate future for all people, animal and places. Thank you for your time. Bravo.
188 Thank you. Next up, we're going to hear from nick caleb of breach collective.
189 Thank you. Council president pirtle-guiney, Portland city councilors, and mayor wilson. My name is nick caleb. I'm the climate and energy attorney at breach collective. I'm also a registered lobbyist with the city and have worked on issues around the cei hub for about a decade or a little bit more. I'd like to begin by invoking the spirit of our late friend bob salinger, a man who is always up for a righteous fight, the fight to protect your community from a catastrophic bomb, train derailment and massive petrochemical disaster on the banks of the Willamette is a righteous fight, and it is a winnable fight for you. It starts with this pending lux application. And just departing from my written remarks, I'm already so pleased at the quality of this council and asking good questions. We've had more oversight and transparency over this issue in the last two hours than we had in the prior three years, so thank you so much for that. And I'll also say that prior to 2022, climate activists, environmental activists had a really strong working relationship with city council and city staff, and that suffered greatly under the last council. And so we are hopeful to return back to that strong working relationship with council. I think it may require some cultural shifts, as I'll be discussing here when I talk about process, but I just want to put that out as an intention that I have. So when people talk about a backroom deal with zenith in 2022, they mean that city elected officials and staff struck a political compromise with zenith and then cobbled together a sham process that shut out the public and frustrated efforts to uncover information about it. An investigation by the city auditor classified communications with zenith as, quote, going beyond what city officials considered the standard process. During that time, city attorneys and staff acted as stenographers for zenith, adopting with adequate, without adequate scrutiny the company's analysis of its compatibility with the city's comprehensive plan. Last week, street roots published an email exchange between city attorney lauren king and pad staffers from early 2024 or excuse me, early December 2024. In response to king's questions about a detail of the luxe, a staffer explained, quote, I mainly just worked with lauren on writing up a decision document after the agreement with zenith had already been made at the commissioner Level. And again, for years here we've been hearing a standard phrase that says we only follow a standard administrative process. We only follow a standard administrative process with lux. And even just the questioning today, the quality of the questioning brought out that that was not the case. And at least the past two processes with zenith, there was not a standard administrative process. There was heavy political influence. And in the case of the 2022 lux heavy lobbying by zenith over that process. So this is the clearest statement of what advocates have been saying since 2022. The city's decision was clearly political, not administrative, and is unlawful. And a lot of the subsequent agreements to that 2022 lux are based on negotiations that happened in that process. So it was a highly important process in the future of all these other permits that were granted. And if there was no integrity in that process, then from our perspective, there's little integrity in subsequent permissions that were offered after it. The oft repeated assertion that staff were and are just following a standard lux process with zenith is absurd, given that the same staff are responsible now for making a decision on a pending lux application, you can understand how the public lacks trust in their willingness to adequately scrutinize zenith's claims. These officials have a credibility problem, and accountability falls to the city council. And if it's true, which I think it is, that that process was not an administrative process. It's a process that should be considered differently in this lux consideration here as well. There should be public involvement and the opportunity to comment on the record before a decision is made. A lux review must also consider whether an applicant has provided full and honest information to the city. There are serious questions right now about what zenith has selectively withheld from its 2022 lux application in order to gain city approval, given zenith's past dishonesty and lawbreaking, the representations merit heightened scrutiny and not rubber stamps. I should also mention that in the city staff's report, there was no mention of zenith's record of dishonesty or legal violations, which is a notable absence considering that it's well documented and groups like columbia riverkeeper have made it available on their website, and we always send it in letters to city. So what can this council do? First, the responsibility for accountability falls to you. Continue to insist on public oversight of zenith and public involvement in decision making. Second, restore trust and transparency to city processes by directing that all internal city communications from the 2022 lux process process and conversations with zenith and its agents be released into the public record. Third, adopt a resolution calling on the mayor to investigate potential violations of zenith franchise agreement with the city, including, but not limited to, unauthorized modification and use of piping. Fourth pass a resolution calling for a reconsideration of zenith's 2024 greenway review. Because zenith's lack of disclosure also impacted that process, holding today's work session and listening session is a big step forward toward accountability. I know I speak for many in attendance when I say that we are eager to support you in these efforts and to celebrate champions of a safer and more disaster resilient city. Thank you.
190 Thank you. Next up we have nancy heiser, who is a member of tank to tank and the neighborhood association.
191 Mayor wilson councilors. All. My name is nancy heiser. I live in linton. I am here today because I live in linton, where I see the tanks here, the trains, and smell the odors from the cei hub every day. For almost a decade, I have engaged with innumerable experts on the dangers and worked in educating the public. I want you to know why my home is a 100 year old, retrofitted brick schoolhouse with views to the east of the river and four mountains to the south and the west, a mossy creek and huge old cedars, forest park, bald eagles circle overhead. Like my neighbors, I love where I live. As annette, I learned an earthquake would create a catastrophic situation. Our one road would likely be unusable in both directions. The river would fill with burning fuel, explosions, debris, the hills behind our homes impassable due to landslides, tree fall fires, bridges would collapse, first responders candidly told us. And I have ultimate respect for Portland fire. Believe me, they will not reach us. More recently, we have learned that the 70 highest risk hazardous materials stored in the county are stored nearby and will be responsible for thousands of additional deaths from poisons released into the air, plumes that will spread for miles. Now, neither shelter in place nor evacuation are viable escapes for us. If you think, based on what you've heard today, that you have a better understanding of structural stability or resilience, I respectfully submit you do not. This is an extremely complicated situation. Just one point that we learned in reviewing the first step of the sbas was that almost every single facility, fire suppression systems are dependent on city water. City water systems. Where are those going to be in an earthquake? In a flood, I call on you to listen carefully to the people who are testifying today, many of them far brighter than any others you've heard so far. And review deq fuel tanks and seismic stability findings corroborate everything you are hearing before you make a judgment. We look to you as the new city council and officials and our new form of government. The situation is what a dick director called a hair on fire situation. Others have compared it to fukushima and deepwater horizon. Some of you have heard these. Your very own. Mike myers issued a statement in 2020 that is daunting. Community advocates are aligned on the cei hub. Dangers. Stopping zenith is a critical first step in preventing potentially the worst disaster in u.s. History. Zenith brings only risk, no benefit to us. We've had 14 years of heightened awareness of the dangers with the reports that have come down. We are no safer now than we were then. When faced with the terrifying scope and magnitude of the potential disaster, will it be fight, flight or freeze? There can only be one answer. You are the promise of this new government. You're making a critical decision about our collective future. So I urge you that it be ongoing, a collective decision with those on the front lines, quasi judicial authority can give you more of a role in this decision. Thank you very much. I've sent you all a longer version of this. And resources.
192 Thank you, nancy. And then we'll close out the panel with kate murphy from columbia riverkeeper.
193 Thank you. Good morning. Mayor wilson, council president and Portland city councilors. We appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is kate murphy. I'm a senior community organizer with columbia riverkeeper. We work to protect and restore the water quality of the columbia river and all life connected to it. There are far more issues than I can cover in this short amount of time that we have today, including the important distinction between the reduction of allowable emissions and the increase of actual real world on site emissions, and the impacts of xena's plan to significantly expand truck, rail and marine traffic. So we have a lot more information that we can share. And I do hope that we continue this conversation further. I know right now everybody is eager for lunch and you have some questions, so I'll try to get through this quickly. Based on our research, we see a timeline that looks considerably different from the one already presented to you. As you likely know, zenith energy has demonstrated a consistent record of violations and dishonesty. The roughly 20 violations that we are currently aware of show that zenith has been out of compliance the entire time it has been in operation in Portland, and it continues to profit from operations not included in its current land use compatibility statement. The most recent violation addressed illegal construction to expand fossil fuel operations by accessing a marine loading dock at the mccall oil facility went undetected for three years, during which time zenith profited from the illegal activities and continues to do so also during that time, in order to obtain city approvals, zenith agreed that any new infrastructure would be used exclusively for renewable fuels. Simultaneously, zenith was violating that agreement by using the new illegally constructed pipeline to handle fossil fuels. In fact, I believe the first product that was handled in the pipeline to the mccall dock was diesel, a fossil fuel. And although it is outrageous, it should come as no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention as there has never been any consequences issued that had enough teeth to deter zenith from its practice of noncompliance. Following a surprise inspection and investigation that came from massive public participation, deq issued a fine that I didn't hear mentioned at all in earlier conversations of over $472,000 and a requirement for zenith to obtain a new lux that includes the entirety of its operations. Which brings us here today. And I want to be very clear about what is happening here. After being caught illegally expanding its fossil fuel operations to incorporate the mccall dock, zenith is taking this opportunity to ask for even more from the city, including retroactively facilitating permitting years of illegal activities. Zenith's current law is specific to zenith property address, meaning it's a landlocked facility in terms of its lux concerningly. Despite plans to expand operations, that is also the limit of zenith liability, so the pending lux is a significant expansion, including three adjacent properties and two additional docks for marine loading that are not currently included on the 2022 locks. At the same time, zenith is potentially compromising the agreement with the city to handle products and new infrastructure that are a minimum of 95% renewable fuel. We don't even know the blend of the quote unquote, renewable fuels they're currently handling. Handling. Zenith is now proposing handling sustainable aviation fuel saf, which requires a minimum of 50% blend of jet fuel, which is another fossil fuel. So any saf that they're talking about is required to be blended with 50% fossil fuels before it can be used in aviation. So keep that in mind when they talk about these 100% renewable components. That's not the end product. Additionally, zenith is very quietly attempting to add a new use to the facility outside of storage and transport. This is a new use in the form of blending, and it's very different from storing and transporting fuels. Very little is known about that plan, and it should be closely analyzed in order to understand the implications for public health and safety. This bears repeating. Zenith is asking you to facilitate retroactively approving years of illegal activities, as well as expanding its operations for fossil fuels and offering a loophole to allow more handling of fossil fuels. And deq has already stated that there's nothing in the draft air permit that would prohibit them from increasing their fossil fuel throughput that's not crewed through the existing infrastructure. So we want to be clear that historic and ongoing illegal activities are not a valid justification to approve a more expansive lux, particularly one that will bring greater threats of harm to our communities. Zenith is a fossil fuel company and will continue to be a fossil fuel company. After the any transition off of crude oil. We are counting on you to see this for what it is. Another desperate greenwashed attempt from a fossil fuel company to pursue profit at any cost. And for years we've had thousands of community members, nearly 50 neighborhood associations and Multnomah county commissioners, elected officials have all spoken up in opposition to zenith's harmful operations and the threats that they bring to our environment, to Portland and to communities along the transportation route. Today, we are here to ask you to do your own investigation. Take your time. Your deadline is not the February 4th deadline. There's a lot of information available that we'd like to share, and we ask that you understand it clearly before making any decisions. And please understand the decision pending is one that carries great consequence and liability for Portland. When someone shows you who they are, you should believe them. When a company commits over 20 violations, you should count on it. And right now we're counting on you. This is a critical moment for you to decide what kind of industry we want to invest in for the future of our city. A moment where bold, protective, local action is more critical than ever. Please listen to the community, have the courage to do what's right and protect us from the harms of the fossil fuel industry. The luck should not be approved. Thank you for your time.
194 Thank you all for being here. We are not going to do questions of this panel. I apologize, we are very short on time. I am going to close our work session. We're going to take a ten minute break, and then we will come back and have a listening session with more folks from the community to get a deeper understanding of what the concerns are. We appreciate you all being part of this initial section. Thank you that we can hear this.
195 What a.
196 Pleasure to.