The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-03-17
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (22,798 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
During a March 17, 2025 work session of Portland City Council, staff and outside panelists presented background on the Critical Energy Infrastructure (CEI) Hub, a roughly six-mile stretch of fuel storage and distribution infrastructure in Northwest Portland. City planning staff described the hub's roughly 11 terminals, storage tank capacity, fuel sourcing and distribution patterns, and the zoning code framework limiting new bulk fossil fuel terminals and capping existing storage. Emergency management staff outlined seismic liquefaction, wildfire, and industrial fire risks, noted the absence of a single comprehensive CEI Hub emergency plan, and described ongoing community preparedness work in the Linnton neighborhood. Panelists from Multnomah County, the Department of Environmental Quality, and the Governor's resilience office discussed financial responsibility requirements for spill cleanup, the state's seismic fuel tank stability program and its compliance and enforcement mechanisms, and broader statewide fuel resilience and transition planning. Council members raised clarifying questions throughout regarding fuel definitions, storage thresholds, regulatory jurisdiction over unincorporated areas and the airport, financial assurance mechanisms, industrial firefighting capacity, community engagement obligations tied to a FEMA-funded zoning project, and the possibility of convening a multi-agency coordinating table. No policy decisions were made; any votes that may have occurred are recorded in the vote ledger.
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 Eyewitness. Good morning. We are going to start our work session. It is March 17th at 931. We've got a couple of folks who will be joining us in a few minutes. And I believe we have councilor Morillo online with us today. Councilors. When we held a work session pretty early in our time here on zenith, there were some questions about the cei hub more broadly and policy around the cei hub. And I suggested that we separate those conversations, have the look back conversation, what happened around work between the city and zenith, separately from the look forward conversation, how are activities at the cei hub more broadly regulated, and what are the various tools that we have today? Is the second part of that conversation. We will be hearing from folks at the city, but also at the state and the county who help to regulate the activities that happen at the critical energy infrastructure hub. We will learn about what levers the city has to control those activities, what levers our partners have. And this will, I hope, set us up for a broader conversation about the future of our fuel policy, how to mitigate risks now, and the timeline for potentially storing fuel in less bad places in the future in Oregon. To have those conversations, though, we need background and tools to better understand and be on the same page about what is possible. And again, who has each of those levers. We are not going to get to problem solving today. We have a short period of time and a lot of people to hear from. Just like, frankly, we won't get to the real solutions to keep our community more safe in the short term either. Today, though, is where we start. I suspect that there are a committee or two that may pick up pieces of this conversation moving forward. This is not the end of the conversation. This is laying that framework and giving all of us background again on where the different levers are for the different ways in which we regulate the business at the critical energy infrastructure hub and our fuel sources in Oregon more broadly, we are going to run through information from the city and then hear from some of our partners at the county and the state, and our presenters have asked that we hold substantive questions to the end once we have heard from everybody, because there may be things that are answered by some of the later speakers. But if you have clarification questions as we go, because it may be a little while before we can get to those, please do raise your hand and I'll make sure that we get to you as soon as we can. With that, I am going to turn it over to donnie oliveira to kick us off and introduce the other panelists here. Thank you both. Thank you all three so much for being here today. And mr. Mayor, thank you very much for joining us for this conversation. I know that this is a lot of time out of your day to be here, but I think it's important for all of us, including you, to hear some of the same information.
1 Great. Thank you. Council president. Good morning. Councilors donnie oliveira for the record. So the critical energy infrastructure hub is a six mile stretch of storage tanks and associated infrastructure that poses seismic, hazardous and climate risk if not mitigated. It is a legacy burden and like many of the industrial areas of our city, is built alongside and over historic neighborhoods. Council president, thank you so much for extending the amount of time we have with you all today. And yet the work session duration is still truly not adequate enough to outline the history of the site and all the intricacies of the regulatory and oversight framework in place. So our hope today is to provide a high level overview of the roles and responsibilities of local and state partners with an outline of the fuel supply functions, the risk the hub poses to human and environmental health, and some of the current and upcoming actions being taken to improve safety and assess mitigation tools. Next slide please. I want to thank dca, myers and the public safety team for their partnership in pulling together the emergency response details that help provide a more complete picture of the city's challenges, along with regulatory responsibilities that tom armstrong is going to go over. We think that will be a starting place for you all to contemplate how to proceed with addressing the challenges that the psi hub poses to the city and the region, but in reality, we're going to need a lot more help from our our state and county partners. Next slide please. So the work session is broken up into two sections. We're going to have a presentation from city staff, sort of the foundational information about roles and responsibilities. And then we're going to invite our guest panelists from the state and the county to talk about the role and the psi hub, and hopefully leave a little bit at the end for discussions and questions about how we might work together to address the psi hub. And with that, I'm going to hand it over to tom armstrong from the bureau of planning and sustainability to kick off the presentation. Thank you. Council president, city councilors. I'm for the record, I'm.
2 Tom armstrong. I'm a supervising planner at the bureau of planning and sustainability, and I've been our lead planner on fossil fuel work now for the last ten years or so. I'm going to start this morning just giving you an orientation of the psi hub itself. Next slide please. And really sort of the strategic start with the strategic approach that's been informing our work. And in, in terms of what like I like to term is a legacy challenge. There are these are existing facilities that have developed over time. And what we now know is a high risk area. And at the same time, you know, fossil fuels are are an essential part of our economy and lifestyle. And yet we need to transition away from them. And so what we've been trying to achieve is to mitigate those risks by limiting the growth of these facilities and making the existing facilities safer. Next slide please. Just to orient everybody, this is a map of portland's major industrial and employment zones. And the psi hub is located in the northwest industrial district. It runs along the Portland harbor along Willamette river and highway 30. In northwest Portland. Next slide please. And the psi hub consists of about 11 different fossil fuel terminals that encompass 630 storage tanks and stores, over 350 million gallons of fuel products, and all the associated elements that come with that pipelines, electrical substations, marine docks, rail lines, all the fuel distribution facilities that come with this sort of congregation of facilities in this one location. Next slide please. So where does the fuel come from? We get most of our fuel from the refineries up in the bellingham area of puget sound. About two thirds of it comes down via the olympic pipeline from bellingham. And it terminates in in Portland. But that pipeline has is full. It's it runs at capacity. It's been at capacity for a number of years now. So we get another 25% or so of our fuel via barge coming both from the puget sound refineries and refineries down in california. And then we get a little bit of fuel and, and especially renewable fuel products via rail coming through the two major rail lines that connect through the columbia gorge. Next slide please. Where does the fuel go once it gets to into Portland? You know, the cy hub serves about 90% of oregon's fuel supply. So it comes into Portland and then goes back out. There's a smaller pipeline that runs from Portland to eugene, and there's another smaller fossil fuel terminal down in eugene. Some of it goes on barge up to the tri-cities area to serve eastern Oregon and eastern Washington, and the rest of it gets distributed via truck out of Portland. There are also two aviation fuel pipelines, one to pdx and one over to the hillsboro airport. The other 10% of oregon's fuel supply is transported in. We get a little bit from truck from california. And then there are pipelines from utah and montana that come into the tri-cities area, and the fuel gets distributed from there. Next slide please. So where is the fuel consumed? We don't have a lot of exact data on on where in terms of fuel sales or that for that matter. But you know, we do know it. It closely runs with population. And so when we look at at the population, you know, about 43% of the state's population is in the tri county area. And then, you know, when you include the rest of the valley, we're up to 70% of the population and fuel consumption in the Willamette valley. So that fuel is not going very far once it once it gets to Portland. Next slide please. So now I'm going to explain a little bit about the multiple bureaus and agencies at all levels of government that have a role or responsibility in regulating the activities at the fossil fuel terminals in the cy hub. Next slide please. Starting with the city bureaus. Again, there are multiple multiple bureaus that touch a part of the cy hub, starting with the bureau of emergency management, which we'll hear a little bit more in just a minute. Pbem is responsible for developing and implementing strategic planning programs to prepare for and respond to emergencies, including hazardous materials, spills and releases. Portland fire and rescue has a dual role in that. They are, you know, first responder in an emergency. And then also the city's fire marshal plays a regulatory role in permitting and inspecting these facilities. Portland. Permitting and development reviews development applications for any structures and expansion or alterations to these facilities to ensure they comply with city development codes. And I'll get in a little deeper to that in a moment. The bureau of planning and sustainability plays a number of different roles. We are responsible for regulating land use and developing the policies in the comprehensive plan that are implemented through the zoning code. Bts also runs the franchise utility program, which licenses uses in the public right of way. And then finally, bts manages the city's renewable fuel standard, which is a blending right now is a blending mandate for diesel fuel sold in Portland. The bureau of transportation issues permits for improvements in the right of way, including pipelines. And then they also establish freight routes for trucks, especially for hauling hazardous materials, including fuel, through the city. And then finally, the bureau of environmental services establishes pollution control standards as well as managing stormwater and wastewater discharge permits for these facilities. Next slide please. At the state level, there's also a number of different agencies and departments that are involved in in regulating or inspecting these facilities. The department of environmental quality has responsibility for air quality permits and seismic stability assessments. And we have a guest panel coming up. To provide more information on those programs. Deq also has authority for stormwater and wastewater discharge permits and planning for oil spill response. The Oregon state fire marshal conducts inspections of these facilities and manages the community right to know program, in which these facilities report to the state fire marshal. How much material, what kinds of material? The volumes. So that the state fire marshal can use that to help local agencies plan for emergency response. And we can have more information on that with another of our guest panelists. The department of emergency management coordinates statewide emergency services, and they respond to emergencies and disasters that affect all or part of the state. The department of transportation acts as an agent for the federal railroad administration and inspects railroad track and cars and signal crossings and operating practices. Odot also receives quarterly reports describing the type and quantity of hazardous materials that are transported via rail, and shares that information to help inform emergency response. And then finally, the building codes division regulates pressurized piping for chemicals and petroleum products. And they are the agency that's responsible for review and inspection of improvements to the pipelines, to the piping at the terminals themselves. Next slide please. And then at the federal level, the federal rail administration is responsible for regulating the railroads, including the handling of hazardous materials fisma the pipeline, hazardous materials safety administration is responsible for regulating interstate pipelines. And natural gas pipelines. And the environmental protection agency responds to hazardous material spills. And finally, the us coast guard is the lead agency for incidents that happen in the coastal zone, which for our area is loosely defined as any waterway, including the columbia river up to the bonneville dam and the Willamette river, up to the Willamette falls. The coast guard also certifies that oil carrying vessels have the financial ability to pay for the cost of cleanup in the event of an oil spill, and they are part of the response in terms of when there when a spill does occur. Next slide please. So this is just an overview of the many different levels and agencies that have regulatory responsibilities. Now I'm going to go a little bit deeper into what the city is responsible for. Next slide please. One more. Next slide. There we go. So in terms of starting at the basic level for a building permit, you know any new construction expansion, alteration of a structure including storage tanks requires a building permit that gets reviewed by Portland permitting and development. And they review that against both our city code. The Oregon state building codes and the fire code. The city's fire marshal gets involved with reviewing and permitting any storage tank that handles hazardous material that's larger than 60 gallons. So, you know, that's a pretty small tank there that where the fire marshal gets involved. Again, you know, the any any change on site, such as replacing lighting or pumps requires electrical or mechanical permits. And I will say again, this is a distinction that the when it comes to plumbing and piping, the city's authority is over essentially water lines. And that the hazardous materials, the fuel lines are the responsibility of the state. Building code division. Next slide please. Now I'm going to get a little bit more into how these fossil fuel terminals are regulated through the zoning code. And I'm going to start with we have adopted within our zoning code some definitions for fossil fuels and renewable fuels. That that really set up the regulatory framework. I will note that with our definition of renewable fuels and the reference that it cannot have more than 5% fossil fuel content. That that sets a very high bar for what we define for land use regulatory purposes as what is a renewable fuel. And that what we're really these are the renewable inputs that then get blended with the fossil fuel products that that then get marketed and go to the gas stations and the other outlets. And so the it is the inputs that we consider to be the renewable fuel and it and that once it's blended with that fossil fuel product, it all it is all still considered a fossil fuel. For under the purposes of the zoning code and what we regulate. Next slide please.
3 President, can I interrupt with a clarifying.
4 Yes. Go ahead.
5 You said that this is a high bar. I'm trying to understand who's playing field. We're on with respect to high bar. I'm just trying to understand our definition here and what that means, both in the market and everyday people.
6 So if you if you look at. For example, diesel fuel gets it mixed at various levels in the marketplace. There can be an 80 over 20 mix, 80% fossil mixed with 20% biofuel or renewable. And that that gets sold at a fuel station as as a what am I looking for? The renewable diesel that 20% renewable content is what qualifies as renewable under this. And I'll get to this in a moment and why that makes a difference. But that once it gets mixed into that 80 over 20, we still consider that under the zoning code and which storage tanks you can use and what you can do with those storage tanks, that's still considered a fossil fuel. Whereas a I think like the deq clean fuels program will count that as part, you know, that as part of their clean fuel program, so to speak. And this will become clear, maybe if I can get just a little, little further into this. So the other thing we've done in the zoning code is create a special use category called bulk fossil fuel terminals. And we've defined that as being any terminal that has more than 2 million gallons of storage tank capacity and has access to a regional transloading facility. They have a connection to the pipeline or a railroad or a dock, something that is bringing that fuel in from outside the region. And just for reference, you know, the 2 million gallon standard, the smallest terminal we have has about 12 million gallons of storage capacity. Next slide please.
7 Can you give folks just a little more context.
8 For 2 million as we're looking at that picture with the tanks. Like how many tanks is that. What does that mean? What amount of supply is that.
9 Yeah. When we set this standard back in 2016, the 2 million gallon capacity was set at what we calculated at the time was what was being carried in one unit train. Coming into Portland. And that not in the typical practice is a train comes in offloads into these tanks. You get enough fuel in the tanks and then and then a ship will come up to the dock, and then that fuel can be offloaded into the ship. It would be very expensive in terms of ship tying to have that ship at the dock and have multiple trains come in and directly offload into that ship. That's why the that gets offloaded into the tanks, you build up enough fuel product and then it gets offloaded all at once into a tanker. So that's how we set that standard. As for this specific facility that we're looking at here, I don't know off the top of my head, but I would guess that it's. 10 to 12 or actually more than that, probably on the order of 30 to 40 million gallons of fuel storage. In what we're looking at in that picture. I will say the other the other thing that we have included in the zoning code is some provisions that look at ownership of all of these parcels. And so that that parcel highlighted in blue, what you see in pink is all one. What is considered all one terminal, even though that parcel in blue is across northwest front avenue from the storage tanks and doesn't have any storage tanks on it. That company could not build additional fuel storage, fossil fuel storage on that parcel and say, well, this parcel only has 2 million. Has less than 2 million gallons on it. So we have provisions in there to sort of trace the ownership of the parcels and consolidate that into, into so that it doesn't create a loophole where multiple different ownership entities could string together to, to create a bunch of small 2 million gallon facilities.
10 And I believe councilor Kanal has a question before.
11 We let you keep going as well.
12 Yeah. Thank you. Are there any bulk fossil fuel terminals outside of the city, outside of the cei hub, but within city limits? Or are all bulk fossil fuel terminals?
13 I believe there is one off of columbia boulevard. It's a propane distribution facility. That may qualify as a bulk fossil fuel terminal. They're pretty close in terms of the storage. They receive all of their propane product via rail. But that's the only larger facility that that has that rail connection and a large amount of storage. But off the top of my head, I can't remember how much storage tank capacity they have at that, their facility.
14 Thank you.
15 So once we've defined what a bulk fossil fuel terminal is, what we've done is we've prohibited new ones outright. So you can't create a new fuel terminal with more than 2 million gallons of storage tank capacity. And we have designated the existing fossil fuel terminals as a limited use. And we have limited their storage tank capacity to that which existed as of August 2022, which is the last time council adopted these regulations. We've been in a sort of endless appeal cycle. Since 2016 and, and, and have finally prevailed as of about a year ago. The state appeals were exhausted. There is still one federal appeal. Appeal in federal court that is still pending. But for the most part, in terms of the state regulations, that that August 22nd is the effective date. And so what this next slide please. Let's go there. So when we adopted this we there are a number of exceptions in the zoning code to get at the issue of well what is not a bulk fossil fuel terminal. And we wanted to make it clear, you know, gas stations are not a bulk fossil fuel terminal. Many of the distributors go to these larger facilities, get product via truck, bring it back to their facility, and from there distribute to other parts of the state. And so those distributors that are bringing in the product in and out exclusively by truck are not considered bulk fossil fuel. Terminals. And then we made a distinction about sort of manufacturers that get fossil products, liquid fossil products and use them as an input to their manufacturing. And so we wanted to make that clear that they were not a fossil fuel terminal. I think the key one here is, is around fleet transportation. And there is an exception for fuel that is exclusively used at airports, marine terminals or rail yards. And so what what we wind up with is a structure where at the existing bulk fossil fuel terminals in terms of fossil fuels, they are allowed to they are limited to use their existing tank capacity. They are allowed to reconfigure that tank capacity so that they can demolish older tanks, consolidate them into larger, newer tanks. As as their business model sees fit. We wanted to allow for that so that they they can and will make seismic upgrades and make safer tanks. The other thing is that they can add storage capacity for non fuel fossil products, things like asphalt. Solvents. Lubricants. And then there is the other exceptions are for these fleet transportation fuels. Aviation fuel for the exclusive use there. That provision in particular was put in because at the time aviation fuel is the only fuel component that we see is forecasted to increase in use in demand over time. And there's more information about these fuel forecasts in your supplemental information memo. The other components are, you know, the motor gasoline and the diesel. Those are expected to and have been declining over time and eventually replace with with renewable fuel products. But aviation fuel is the only one that was forecasted to increase. Which is which is why this exception was included there. And then finally there's an exception. For the renewable portland's renewable fuel standard. And so any any sort of storage tank or facility that's needed to supply that fuel. With would be allowed under under the zoning code. I think what what this sets up and what we have seen in the one, 1 or 2 cases that that have utilized or sought to utilize these exceptions is that we set up a system of conditions that require inspections and 33rd party certifications, that those facilities are being exclusively used for that purpose, whether it's renewable or aviation fuel. Next slide please. And then in the other way that the city regulates activities is through the franchise agreement, which is a license or a right to use the public right of way. We you know, this applies to a number of different. Uses. You think the electric power lines, the cell phone towers, the cable lines. But it also includes pipelines. For fossil fuel distribution. And there are six of those franchises that operate in the sci hub that actually governs the use of those pipelines running underneath the streets. And then this program works with PBOT, who actually issues the permits for physical improvements in the right of way, say, when they need to go dig up the street to fix a pipeline or something like that. That concludes my portion of this presentation. In terms of the of the zoning code structure. I'm going to transition and hand things over to ratchet nawwaf, the chief resilience officer, to explain the emergency management side of things.
16 Thank you tom. Good morning council. My name is richard narwhal and I serve as the resilience chief resilience officer at Portland bureau of emergency management. As council chair mentioned that there is a lot of information that we are sharing today. And I'm I'm going to provide a high level summary of major risks associated with cei hub location, where it's located, our current emergency response plans, and operational guidelines that touch upon the hazards that are associated with cei hub, and the active risk reduction and mitigation efforts that are underway. This is a high level summary. If in more information in need is needed on any of these specific items. I can provide that information either after the session or however the council would request. Next slide please. Thank you. So the primary risk we are addressing in terms of cei hub where it's located is liquefaction, the cascadia subduction zone earthquake, or as what we call the big one, poses a significant hazard to the pacific northwest. Numerous studies have detailed the catastrophic potential of a magnitude 9.0 earthquake. We'll talk about one of this such case study in just few slides. One of the major cascading effects of such an earthquake is liquefaction, which happens when saturated soil loses strength and behaves like liquid. Like a liquid. Typically triggered by earthquakes in areas with wet soils, such as near river lakes or oceans. This can lead to landslides, sand blows, and structural damage. The cei hub is situated on soil that suspect successive, susceptible to liquefaction and lateral spreading during the earthquake. Compounding this, many of the storage tanks that were constructed before modern seismic building codes, as tom mentioned, rendering them highly vulnerable to an earthquake. Next slide please. So this map illustrates portland's major industrial areas highlighted in gray. The cei hub is located along the Willamette river, just adjacent to highway 30, in northwest Portland. The yellow part. A common question that we get often asked by the county, by the community as well, is can we relocate cei hub to a safer location within Portland? And the short answer is no. There is no safer location within the city. That that means that this necessitates a broader state and regional discussion, which has now started. And we'll talk about it towards the towards the end of our presentation. Next slide please. Now this is a map of liquefaction risk in the event of an earthquake in the cascadia subduction zone. Earthquake. Earthquake. As you can see, the high risk area corresponds with our industrial area. In dark red. Which to say that there's no safe place in Portland to look to relocate an industry like cei hub within the city's industrial zones. Thank you. And next slide please. Liquefaction is not the only hazard that we have associated with or like the earthquake is not the only hazard that's associated with cei hub. Cy hub is also located next to forest park, which is a wildfire hazard area presenting the risk of fuel terminal fire causing a wildfire in the forest park. Portland fire actively engages in risk reduction efforts both in forest park and at the cy hub, including annual fire and life safety reports, fire alarm test and site inspections at the cy hub facility to mitigate mitigate risk of fire. And this also highlights that we often limit cy hub to a liquefaction. It kind of has it. But there are other hazards that are associated with with the facility with where it's located. Next slide please. To understand the potential impact of cascadia subduction zone earthquake on the cy hub Multnomah county office of sustainability and city of city of portland's bureau of emergency management commissioned a comprehensive study in 2020, which was finalized in 2022. The collaborative study aims to quantify the potential fossil fuel release from a cascadia subduction zone earthquake and evaluate the resulting damage to the surrounding environment and community. What you see on your slides are some of the highlights from the report. The cy hubs location, adjacent to Willamette river and forest park, has significant concern about the risk of accidents, spills, or catastrophic failures following a major seismic event during a cascadia subduction zone earthquake. The existing containment structures are projected to be inadequate to contain the combined release, to contain the combined release from multiple tank failures. The scale of this fuze. These fuze fuel release could rival the 2010 deepwater horizon disaster, the largest oil spill in the us. Water, so it can be pretty catastrophic. Notably, the study revealed that the average age of the tank with documented construction years is 1954, predating the implementation of modern seismic building codes and the understanding of the earth, and since then, our understanding of the earthquake and as well as the construction has improved significantly. An assessment on safety of these tanks is ongoing, and our guest panelists from deq will talk more about it in towards the end of the presentation. Next slide please. So this slide shows agencies that could be involved in emergency response if there was a significant incident at the cei hub. Depending on the and depending on what the on ground needs are, what what what's what's the response? What's the response needs? Tom talked about roles and responsibilities of different agencies earlier in the presentation to add to that. In emergency management we there is a the response that we use is that all emergencies begin locally. So depending on the cause, magnitude and scale of the incident, various local, regional and federal agencies will become will become involved in the response. And we'll start with all the local agencies. So the city agencies, Portland fire, the bureau of emergency management, environmental services, transportation and other agencies, the Multnomah county emergency management office. These agencies will be the first agencies that will start the response response process and as as the incident escalates, will involve state and federal agencies. For example, local emergency management agencies. Local emergency management agencies will lead city by coordination, alert and warning, and shelter provisions for any displaced individuals. If anything was any significant incident were to happen on scene. Response will be led by Portland fire. As tom talked about it, and if there is a subsurface spill into or causing potential fuel release into our sewer system, bureau of environmental services will be involved. Portland bureau emergency management will help with citywide coordination, lead Elana warning and work with county on sheltering. Bs spill protection, community response program provides 24 over seven duty officer coverage for investigating and responding to spill notification and alert. So there are programs right now that are in place that that touch upon potential accidents, spills that could happen within ci hub facility. And I would just add, there's no program that's specifically aiming at potential incident accidents at cei hub, but these are programs that exist for anything that happens across the city. It related to the related to the bureau's capability. So ci hub businesses are federally required under the oil pollution act and clean water act to maintain industrial stormwater pollution control plans and facilities, spill prevention and facilities spill response plans, which bureau of environmental services reviews and approves facilities will plan to requires immediate notification to be a spill protection community response program. However, in my conversation with several bureaus across the city, a multi facility event event plan for of this scale is has not been developed and is needed right now as as the local agencies reach their capacity, resources are requested from state and federal agencies and they start to come in picture. We do initial notification right away to any concerning agencies, but resources resource requests are submitted as as local resources are exhausted in a major spill. As I highlighted in my previous slide, environmental protection agency and deq will get involved in the response, and these agencies will be responsible for ensuring that businesses are held accountable financially as well. If the spill is in our waterways or on land surface, oem, oem and FEMA will support our emergency response as as requested. Please note that in event of a cascadia subduction zone earthquake, the cei hub will be one of the many life safety issues that these agencies will address across state of Washington, state of Oregon, and centrally state of alaska and california. Depending on how wide the impact is. This underscores the critical need to enhance our alert warning system and emergency management planning for neighborhoods in the immediate vicinity of the ci hub, where we might not be able to get right away, not just in response. All these agencies have a role in risk reduction as well. Risk reduction and preparedness as well. For example, deq's assessment of seismic vulnerability of fuel tanks, or the recent announcement about the EPA requiring 90 I hub facilities to buy and install air sampling equipment, equipment to monitor concentration of air contaminant. These are these are some examples of how different agencies are now working towards reducing the risk to the local community, and also helping with mitigation efforts that are that are now have have started. Next slide please. As I mentioned in my previous slide, we currently lack a previous few slides. We currently lack a comprehensive plan to address all hazards and risks associated within the ci hub. So basically, there's no one single plan that addresses everything that's ongoing with ci hub or all the facilities that are within ci hub. There are several several different plans and bureaus that have pieces of what's going on depending on what what hazard we are talking about within the ci hub. And on this slide you see some of the.
17 Rashid. I don't know if you can hear us, but you just froze and we have not heard the last couple of sentences from you. Donnie, are you able to shoot him a quick text and see if.
18 I texted him? Donnie.
19 Okay.
20 Thank you. Perfect. Thank you.
21 Let me just.
22 It looks like we have him back. Rashid, do we have you back?
23 Yes. Sorry.
24 Thank you.
25 I don't know where I was cut off. Was I on hazard slide?
26 Yes, yes. Yeah.
27 We heard the first few sentences of the hazard slide.
28 Okay.
29 Thank you so much. Yeah. So what I was talking about was that these are some of the hazards that are associated with ci hub. So there's risk of earthquake unhealthy air. If there was a fire, industrial fire or a fuel release. Because if, if structures were to collapse, there's even if they don't catch on fire, the fuels, the chemicals that evaporate could make the air pretty toxic very quickly. So there's definitely unhealthy air could become a key issue. And that's where we also get a lot of inquiry from the local local community. I did talk about oil spills in previous slides, and when I was talking about roles and responsibilities of different agencies and the risk of wild wildland and or industrial fire. So there's no one plan that addresses all these hazards. We have different plans that that touch upon these hazards. There's city's emergency operation plan operations plan, which talks about overarching emergency response plan that would be like for any hazard. These plans are not specific to cei hub, their city's earthquake response framework. Again, how will city respond to an to an earthquake across the city? And then unhealthy air operation guideline which is more catered to a what we use for whenever we are air quality starts to deteriorate. We have this plan which does give us some notice in terms of air. Basically that means is that air quality is going to get bad. So we do track it daily. However, in a incident at cei hub, the air quality can change pretty quickly. So it could potentially be a no notice event where a timely alert, warning and evacuation could be needed. Next slide please. In addition to the plans that I mentioned on my previous slide are hazard specific plans. We have emergency response functional annexes that address city's response capabilities. Again, the scope of these plans is a city wide. They're not specific to cei hub. With our current capabilities and informed by lessons from major disasters in la and hawaii, we recognize that we are underprepared to issue timely alert to the local communities for events beyond routine fire and police activity. We're talking about minutes within minutes here. So from minutes to up to 50 minutes that could that could play. That could be a big issue. From what we have seen across across the across the country, with recent disasters. We have also received inquiries from community members in linnton neighborhood regarding the need for local alert and warning capabilities and to do more work in terms of evacuation planning. You would also notice that the plans that I have on this slide, some of these plants have not been updated recently. We are aware, but we currently do not have sufficient staffing within our planning to maintain a appropriate planning update cycle. So yeah, I wanted to flag that out. Similarly, the evacuation plan that I address on this slide addresses city wide framework for evacuation. It's not specific to ci hub. What I would like to also highlight for council's awareness. So as I was talking about different hazards that are associated with ci hub. So there's wildfire. There's there could be potential landslides if it was right after the earthquake, there could be risk of fire, there could be risk of unhealthy air. There could be issue of structures collapsing. So a street that you mark as an evacuation route might not be available. So there are a lot of kind of like challenges and restrictions around cei hub for the community members. For us to do a an evacuation planning. However, that being said, more dedicated resources are needed for us to specifically focus focus on on communities around cei hub. And I'll get to that in my next few slides. Next slide please. Shifting to community preparedness, here are some of the highlights of pbms work within within the linton neighborhood. This includes multiple training events that we have done there, such as basic, full, basic net training in September 2014 and may of 2018, community cpr and first aid certification class in November 2023. The linton community center is also a designated beacon site, which is basic earthquake emergency communication node. These sites are equipped with a secure and fully stocked with communication equipment. Pbem also collaborated with linton net to establish nine hilltop caches, which are small equipment caches containing medical and communication equipment strategically placed in each of linton's many neighborhoods. Through our community preparedness training, we teach two week ready program to for community members to prepare for sheltering in place where where it's possible and safe. Pbem community preparedness manager jeremy vancuren is in the room today and can share more information about our our community preparedness program if needed. Next slide please. Regarding chemical storage within urban areas, it's important to recognize and I think a council member asked the question about it earlier. It's important to recognize that cei hub is not the sole location within the city that stores potentially dangerous chemical. But potentially that could that could be dangerous post-earthquake. Two two to help local communities get organized about this, there is local emergency planning committee, our community groups that are that preplan for hazardous material spill and releases focusing on the epa's list of lists. These are worst case chemicals that are stored within the urban urban areas. This group is managed through Oregon state fire marshal's office, and these committees are essential for to for preparedness when it comes to these dangerous chemicals. One of our guest panelists will provide further details shortly. On on this particular committee. Next slide please. And now I'd like to pivot from emergency response to risk reduction and mitigation effort to talk about some of the efforts that are ongoing. Next slide please. So these are five current bills that are that have had their first hearing I believe 2 or 3 weeks ago. The city has testified in support of all these five bills. I'd highlight that hb 2949, which mirrors Multnomah county's effort to ensure fuel terminals have financial capacity, capacity for post-disaster cleanup, similar to programs that are in place in Washington and california. This will initiate a state level study and legislative report for further action. I believe we have a county guest panelist who will talk more about the county's efforts that support this bill. We I'd also highlight hb 3450, which directly addresses the cei hubs location, and that it's in high risk area, sparking a statewide discussion on enhancing the safety and resilience of liquid fuel distribution facilities across the state. Hb 2151 addresses expanding the permissible use of seismic risk mitigation fund. This is a fund that's right now is managed by dick. So this bill basically would allow us to use this use this seismic risk mitigation fund for more, more and more cei hub related work that could include potentially installing better alert warning systems within the community. That's what that's what communities are requesting. So we have we are supporting this bill. Our guest panelists from dick will elaborate on these efforts. So these are some of our current current initiatives. Furthermore, I'd add that at the local level, funding from cei hub businesses for a dedicated planner to coordinate local and regional agencies would be advantageous. And to be honest, needed. This position could help facilitate risk reduction and response planning specific to cei hub. So now so many different agencies have small pieces of what their role would be in cei hub. In case there is a multi facility catastrophic incident within cei hub, there is work needed that would allow us to coordinate these coordinate actions, be in terms of response, risk reduction or mitigation across all levels and agencies. I however, I believe a council mandate to cei hub would be needed for us to secure secure such funding. In addition to these bills that I just talked about, there are there are other state wide efforts, including state wide resiliency planning initiatives that are worth mentioning. Our guest speaker, state resilience state chief resilience officer john will will talk more about such efforts. Finally, our county speaker will discuss the county's final financial assurance program, which mandates that cei hub owners and operators assume financial responsibility for damages caused by stored fossil fuel and hazardous material. Next slide please. Oh yes. So I'll now pass to Eric engstrom. Engstrom to talk more about future projects related to cei hub.
30 Thank you. Good morning. My name for the record is Eric engstrom. I'm the interim director at the bureau of planning and sustainability. This slide, as tom mentioned earlier, one of the roles the bts plays is to manage the currency and updating of the zoning code, as well as our comprehensive plan. So in that role, we applied with our other partner agencies for a grant from FEMA, which is a grant that provides staff time and potential for consultant resources to look forward, to be forward looking around this and to look research options for what our policy or code might look like going forward. This is an opportunity to turn our eyes forward and think about where we would rather be. Tom described the policies we have now. We're in the beginning of this process. There will be public involvement opportunities and including for this, this council and committees, potentially, and the community. Before we develop those options. So again, we're at the beginning of this and want to provide some opportunity for the community and council to shape where we're going with this before we zero in on on the specifics, we there are a lot of options available to us. We could look more carefully at transloading, which tom described. It is an element of what goes on at cei hub. We could look longer down the time horizon to how we want to get to a to that full electrification over time, and what that might mean for the cei hub and or policies that go in tandem with potential statewide efforts to look at alternatives to the cei hub. So all of those different directions are potentially on the table with research and exploration through that project. As all zoning and comprehensive plan projects. This would would start with public involvement would eventually lead to a proposed draft that would go to the planning commission and then on to city council.
31 One more.
32 Next slide, please. I think this is the last slide. So overall, in summary, there are a number of things that were described in terms of risk management. The current policies that limit future development of new terminals, the requirements to for seismic upgrades, the discussion around financial responsibility, which you heard about, the efforts that all levels of government to reduce demand for liquid fossil fuels. And then what you heard from around our preparedness for emergencies and obviously more work there as well.
33 All right.
34 So now, council president, we're going to invite our panelists up for the next presentation.
35 Thank you very much.
36 To all of the folks from the city who shared that information with us. I believe we are joined now by members of the state emergency management team, deq, the department of environmental quality and Multnomah county, who is coming up first.
37 I just.
38 Thank you so much for being here. If you could introduce yourself and go ahead and jump right in.
39 Hi everyone. I'm just give brief remarks. My name is john bochenski. I'm the director of sustainability for Multnomah county. Over the past couple of years, as ratchet was mentioning, the county has been looking at the possibility of imposing financial responsibility requirements on the facilities, the bulk storage facilities, as they were described earlier. These facilities stored 2 million gallons or more of fossil fuels. The reason for this has also been described basically as our emergency management director likes to say, the sci hub was not built in a bad location. It was built in the worst possible location from a seismic safety point of view. Of course, there's a, you know, massive human toll, but there's also obviously a big environmental toll. And as it stands today, a lot of the responsibility for the cleanup, while it's squarely on the facilities that caused the mess, they're referred to as responsible parties. There's some doubt that they'll have enough financial wherewithal to pay for the cleanup. So I'll just speak to a few of the reasons why we why we believe that to be the case. The oil pollution act of 1990, which was put into place by congress in the wake of the exxon valdez spill, requires that facilities, onshore facilities, deep deepwater ports. Those are the two types of facilities in the cei hub have to be responsible for the damages they cause up to a certain point, with certain exceptions. So the amount that they're liable for is set by the us coast guard. And that number today is somewhere around $700 million for onshore facilities. The type of facility dictates the amount of liability that they have to have, or the cap under which they're responsible for the exceptions are there, however. So the first big exception is the cap, right. So like, you know, liability above a certain level they're not responsible for. The other is the law provides exceptions under, you know, terrorism acts of war or acts of god. So those are a few, you know, potential limitations. Congress also established a fund to help pay for the cleanup costs or liabilities beyond the cap. And that fund would also pay if we're not sure who is the responsible party. So the state can tap that fund to help pay for cleanup. If there's a slick, they don't know who is responsible for it. They can't send a bill to anybody. There's still money out there to pay for that cleanup. That mechanism is also capped at $1 billion per incident. And the $500 million for cleanup. The study that ratchet mentioned earlier, you know, has a couple startling facts in it. One is that this spill, you know, it's going to the big earthquake hits and these facilities start to fail all simultaneously. It could be a spill that matches the volume of the bp deepwater horizon spill. But rather than occurring out in the gulf of mexico, it would be occurring in the heart of a major American city. So that's obviously very concerning. It also estimates that about half the fuel would spill into the river type of fuel that it is really would kind of dictate the how, you know, whether it sinks or floats or evaporates or whatever. But we the modeling that was done in that report estimates that the fuels will actually flow all the way to the mouth of the columbia river. So, you know, there's a there's a huge, huge geographic impact for the damages. And untangling the web of financial responsibility in the wake of that disaster is going to be difficult, to say the least. So the point of the county's pursuit of financial responsibility program was to ensure that these facilities have the financial mechanisms in place to have funding to start paying for cleanup, irregardless of whether it's a subsidiary or there's a bankruptcy or, you know, any other kinds of causes. And so that's at the heart of what we're trying to do at the county. There's been an attempt, one attempt so far. The commissioners, singleton and moyer have both committed to, you know, bringing that policy forward on a simultaneous track. As ratchet mentioned, the entire board of county commissioners, including the chair, sent a letter to the house committee on emergency management veteran services saying that they support an amendment to house bill 2949 that would move that bill from a study bill to actual legislation, regulatory legislation, that we have a great model for that from Washington. Washington state has an oil spill financial responsibility program that really provides a template that we can use to ensure that facilities in the sci hub and bulk fuel storage facilities in general, you know, not just here in Multnomah county but throughout the state, are have that financial responsibility mechanism in place. And we think this would work really well with the oil spill, financial or sorry, the fuel tank seismic stability program, both providing requirements that they work towards preventing a spill, but also having the requirements in place that they would have the financial, you know, mechanism in place to pay for the cleanup. So that's my little my quick synopsis, and I'm happy to answer questions. And I'm sure the folks from our colleagues at deq will have more to offer.
40 Thank you so much, counselor Smith. Did you have a quick question?
41 Thank you, madam president. Good to see you, john. I am a county commissioner for district one, and I've heard a lot of conversation about the cei hub here in the central city area. My district starts at 82nd and it goes out east to 162nd, in south to southeast clatsop. And so within that area there is a space called the unincorporated areas. And I did not hear you speak about who is responsible for that unincorporated area, that unincorporated areas, like somewhere between 90th and 105th. And then you have maywood park, which, which is not in district one. It's its own city. And I haven't heard anything about that. And then our district, it borders on marine drive, which also borders the columbia river. And so if you could kind of tell me what is the who who is responsible for those areas as well?
42 Thank you, commissioner Smith. So, you know, from a I would say there's overlapping responsibilities for unincorporated areas. There's pockets of unincorporated, there's urban unincorporated areas. And for the most part, those urban unincorporated areas are managed either by the through an intergovernmental agreement in terms of land use and, you know, other urban services are managed through intergovernmental agreement between the cities. So either city of Gresham or city of Portland.
43 Right.
44 But but in terms of this and these particular bills, we need to have language that specifically points out who is responsible for the unincorporated areas in my district, in the city of Portland, because I can guarantee you they will be calling us to try to figure out if something happens. We're less than a half a mile from the columbia river on the furthest north northern part of my district. And the other piece is, are there any concerns for this liquification in district one?
45 Commissioner Smith, the in general, the district one, as you move east in Multnomah county, the soils become more stable. So there's less risk as you move east and there's no bulk fuel storage facilities located in district one.
46 Okay.
47 There would be impacts obviously, but the impacts would be less direct and they would be in district four, for example.
48 Okay. Thank you.
49 Councilor Green.
50 Thank you, madam president. And thank you, john, for testifying today. My question is about the current effort, the county at the board to kind of take up the risk bonding question again, can you just describe a little bit about what those what that's intending to do? And just for everyone's edification?
51 Yeah. Thank you, councilman Green, for the question. So the we've been really modeling our efforts off of the Washington state program. So maybe the best way to do it is to describe the Washington state program to the to my knowledge, in Washington state, facilities like the ones at the sci hub are required to obtain a certificate of financial responsibility, or kofod for short. The certificate of financial responsibility. There's a calculation put in place based on the storage capacity of the facility, and that then dictates the dollar amount for which they have to prove that they have a certain amount of financial protection in place. They're able to prove that by obtaining one or a combination of a few different types of financial assurance mechanisms. Under Washington state law, that can be an insurance policy. That could be a certificate. Sorry, I forget a letter of credit from from a financial institution. It could be a bond or it can be a trust. So under the insurance program, the state is listed as co insured under the. Trust. The state gets a little bit complicated. And I'm not a trust lawyer. So I'm not going to pretend to. But essentially the state is able to be the recipient of and distributor of those funds under a trust. And a trust is just like you put money aside into a separate account. That money's there. If there's a triggering event, then the money is used for its intended purpose, and then the certificate of financial responsibility or sorry, the letter of credit and the bond have a standby trust like an empty trust that if the certificate of credit or the bond is liquidated, then it would fill the trust and then the trust would act in the way that it was stipulated under the law and under the contract. And so essentially, as long, you know, under the Washington state program, as long as the responsible party, the party that spilled the material from their facility is fulfilling their obligations, then they're able to, you know, utilize their own resources, utilize the resources that are from their insurance policy or from their from their trust account. But if the company fails to perform their duty for whatever reason, then the state steps in and is able to distribute funds to the impacted party based on, you know, based on the, you know, people who assert damages because of it. And I should state to the under both federal and state law, you know, a one entity that would be suffering damages would be the sovereign, you know, in this case being the city of Portland or the Multnomah county. You know, if the property is in linnton are no longer inhabitable, be the industrial properties or residential properties. We wouldn't be collecting tax revenue. That's just one example. Obviously, there would be substantial costs associated with responding to an emergency. You know, those could be recoverable under the program as well.
52 Thank you for that. And I recall last year at the county, there was invited testimony from john talbot of the center for sustainable economy. And when he laid out kind of the findings from a brookings paper that kind of described risk bonding. I think one of the things he had said is that there is a sort of a hierarchy of, of quality to these assurance mechanisms. And in his view, the least effective is an insurance policy, because then then the city, the sovereign, is then tied up in court to potentially go after the performance of that of that policy, which, you know, and I think I don't know if the county resolution is speaking to any of that hierarchy of quality there, but I just wanted to flag that for my colleagues.
53 Yeah. Thank you. Councilman Green. The maybe I would adjust that characterization a little bit to say that, you know, under federal law, guaranteed just from the companies is allowed sometimes to say like, hey, we're good for it. So that's probably the least good one. And then there's something called the concept called captive insurance, where a company is able to set up there and say like, hey, we have our own little insurance company that covers our liabilities. And you know, that will pay for any resulting damages. And so those are definitely, I would say, sort of under that tiering, less desirable since the county policy isn't final and is being developed. I really can't speak to exactly what the county policy would or wouldn't do.
54 Thank you so much. Appreciate that.
55 Counselor Smith. Did you have an additional.
56 I do have an additional question. So I want to go back just a little bit. John, I don't know if you know that Portland airport is in my district as well. Oh, okay. And so maybe so are you telling me that there, there are no underground fuel for the for the airport at all?
57 Councilwoman Smith, the I apologize, I didn't realize that the pdx was in district four or sorry, district one. But the airport does have above ground storage facilities. Okay. And that are subject to the regulations that have been described today. The I'm not aware of whether or not they have any underground storage facilities, but under Oregon state law, all underground storage facilities are regulated by the state and local regulations preempted by state law.
58 So just so that we're covering everything in the district, because I just I'm thinking about 33rd and marine drive and you know, where salty's is. And I do everything by restaurants where I.
59 Like to eat. I've been to salty's. It's a good place.
60 So and I'm thinking and then right as you go around, you have the Multnomah county, the water patrol.
61 Yeah, the river patrol. Yeah.
62 Yeah. And the river patrol. And then you have the airport to the south, and I could certainly see some of that marina that that goes from 33rd all the way down. They have all those boats and everything. They have fuel somewhere. And so if we have the big one of sorts, I'm just trying to figure out who is going to be responsible for what, and who knows that they have to be responsible for what. I mean, there's some entities and I'm going to be meeting with curtis soon, but there are some entities that I think you guys need to spell out that's real, so that people can really understand who is going to be responsible for what, because I again, I, I'm going to tell you, I think they're going to come back to the city of Portland, and we have governments within governments that are in that area in district one, that I don't know that you can totally visualize. I had the luxury of campaigning there for a couple of months. So I know that district where it is, and I'm just really concerned about the airport.
63 So the airport does have a large jet fuel storage facilities. As a matter of fact, 100% of the state's jet fuel is right here stored in the city of Portland. The good news is that the under the fuel tank seismic stability program, the port partners that manage the fuel storage facility, it's a sort of a cooperative owned by multiple entities. They are going ahead and redesigning that whole facility in order to meet the state's seismic requirement requirements. So they're among the fastest in complying with that. With that, in terms of smaller fueling facilities, you know, I'm just gonna have to plead ignorance because I don't you know, I've really been focused on the larger facilities that store, you know, in excess of 2 million gallons. And so I don't really know as much. And maybe some of our deq colleagues are going to have a better sense of that, those smaller facilities.
64 I will ask them. They have to have something right there on the in the marina. Yeah. So thank you so much for coming and testifying today.
65 Thank you for being with us today. I think we are going to stay in the theme of emergency management and invite up two folks from the state. We have jonah papathanasiou from the governor's chief resilience, the governor's chief resilience officer, thank you for being here. And mary ann christian from the office of the state fire marshal, if you could both join us. And it looks like we have jonah online. Jonah, why don't you go ahead and get us started?
66 Sure. Well, I'll just be brief, and I regret. Mike, I don't see mike kortenhoef here from the state deq, but if he is, I would defer to him to go first, because some of what I was going to share refers to his the excellent work he's already completed.
67 Jonah. We do have him in the room. Do we need to switch order here?
68 I would be delighted if you let him go first because he's he's he's so smart. And he really what I'm going to say is just going to build on.
69 Why don't we. Why don't we go to deq first and then we'll bring up mike chernoff and christine cvitkovic from deq will do that part of the presentation and then move to emergency management. Introduce yourselves and then go right ahead and jump in.
70 All right. Thank you. Good morning, madam president and city councilors. My name is christine cvitkovic and I am deqs northwest region administrator. We appreciate the invitation to be with you this morning. Deqs northwest region implements all of oregon's environmental laws in the Portland metro area. And the three north coast counties. This work includes issuing and working on permits and certifications to protect discharges and emissions associated with land, air and water. We also conduct compliance reviews, do enforcement activities, respond to complaints, work on clean water plans, and cleanup sites, and much more. With that, I'm going to turn this over to mike to talk more in detail about the seismic stability program.
71 Good morning. Council president and councilors. My name is mike kortenhoef. I'm with the Oregon deq. I'm the manager tasked with implementing these new seismic resilience requirements for the oregon's largest oil storage facilities. I have just a few overview comments to share, and we'll quickly stop talking so we can have time to get the questions you might have first about how we got here and the deq program. You've heard it all this morning and much before the next magnitude nine earthquake will happen. We don't know when. Could be soon, could be decades or longer. I'll just say the spill's predicted will be the worst environmental, public health and economic catastrophe in north America if we can't avoid it. And we're raising that unseen clock with this mitigation work. So much work over the decades by folks with the city governments of all stripes, so well described by tom and all community members businesses, many of whom are here today or are listening. The dire situation is well understood and communicated, befitting the magnitude of this problem. Thank you all for getting us to this point today. I'll simply note that the state law passed in 2022 requires most of oregon's largest oil storage facilities to upgrade their operations to minimize risk and minimize harm of oil spills. When the megaquake occurs, the key words there are minimize harm. Minimizing harm is the statutory standard and incredibly tall order. Deq is committed to making it happen. Preventing these immense spills is the only viable approach to dealing with this risk. We included a short fact sheet in your meeting materials. It describes the major steps of seismic vulnerability assessment and also facility risk mitigation plan development. The fact sheet lists all the facilities subject to the 2022 law. 14 of the 17 are in the city of Portland, including the Portland airport. All of the facilities are currently in compliance with deq requirements are making progress toward meeting these goals. The initial assessments came in by the 2024 deadline that was set in statute.
72 Can I have you pause for one minute? I have a couple of folks who aren't finding the presentation you're referring to online. Rebecca, do you know if that's listed on the website where the public and councilors can find it?
73 Yeah, it was just a brief fact sheet that doesn't that lists the facilities, the 22.
74 Let's make sure that we get that to my office. And rebecca will get it to you. So for folks who are watching online, for anybody from the public watching, we can post it after the fact so that they can look at it. And, and cross cross check what they're hearing from you now with what they can see on the paper later. Sorry to interrupt.
75 Council president the memo that he's referring to mike's referring to was in the council packet. So it's that memo. So you all should have gotten that okay.
76 So councilors should have it in the email that you received. But for the public we'll get it up online after the hearing after the work session today I apologize that it's not up already. And it's councilor Ryan is saying to me that it's attachment d if folks around the dais are looking for it. Thank you. Go ahead and continue I apologize, no.
77 Council president, thank you for making that clear. I was saying that the state law requires the feasibility or the seismic assessments to be performed, and there was a 2024 deadline. All facilities submitted their initial seismic vulnerability assessment materials to us, and it's under adequacy review now, an iterative process. Each facility has unique aspects that are put them on different timelines for completion. Until the assessments are complete, we won't have calendar deadlines for ultimate completion of the mitigation work. We do require that the mitigation implementation plan be completed within ten years of the mitigation plan approval date. Specific deadlines for that mitigation work will be included in the mitigation plans when they're ready for approval. Last, I want to emphasize that coordination is essential for this complex, multi-specialty, multi-jurisdiction work. As we've heard, coordination with the city, county, state agencies, federal, Portland state university, community members and others has been going on and needs to continue. For example, we know that the deq mitigation plan approvals must square up with city building permit approvals, like what occurred with the first mitigation project approved just this January at the Portland airport. The port of Portland is well ahead of this game with their whole seismic project, and the new tanks are already approved for construction. Coordination is going very well. From the beginning, it was noted that the deq requirements for oil storage resilience are just one piece of what's needed to protect ourselves. Deq's work is intensely focused on the inside the fence lines of the facilities. We've heard repeatedly from many, including facility operators themselves, that work outside the fence lines, is needed to. That's where city and other involvement is essential. Again, as we heard today, that could include area wide shakealert systems, improvements to water supply that will be needed in an emergency egress, emergency access, fire control and more. The existing deq program doesn't have the mandate or the funding to work on resilience outside the facility fence lines, but we can participate in conversations about it, and we're committed to coordinating facility mitigation work with area wide work to get the most effective and economical outcomes. With that, we'll end and happy to take further questions.
78 Thank you. Councilors, I'm just noting that we have just over an hour left, and we do have folks from the state emergency management team coming, but it looks like we have a few questions. Councilor Green.
79 I'm actually just up in the queue for the broader.
80 Broader questions. Okay. Councilor Novick is your question specific to this panel?
81 Yes.
82 Go right ahead.
83 Thank you, madam president. Mr. Courtney, I just want you to elaborate on what mitigation efforts you can require. It's my understanding that actually you can require the companies to take steps to upgrade and ensure that the tanks don't explode and have the oil all over the place. Is that more or less correct?
84 Councilor. Novick. The standard is minimize risk, and we set a very low bar. That means no uncontained spill over a barrel of oil. So that would get to where your question leads, how they're going to do that is a business decision. Like at the Portland airport, building all new tanks up to modern seismic code is one approach. Secondary containment of a spill is the other approach. We anticipate to be heavily used for existing facilities. So mitigation might include robust, really robust secondary containment to prevent it from impacting others.
85 And we actually talked a few weeks ago. And my understanding is you have the enforcement hammer to ensure that they take those steps to prevent spills. You can impose a penalty equal to the economic benefit of noncompliance. So if they're avoiding things that would cost them a lot of money, you can assess fines equal to that amount of money.
86 Councilor Novick. Yes, enforcement is a part of our law. It's connected to the deq enforcement in general. There is a process for that that involves a matrix of penalties. We apply. And most especially applying a additional penalty for any economic benefit achieved for failing to comply with the law, which could be huge.
87 Thank you. I just want to note that this is a pretty big deal. I mean, senator dembrow introduced the legislation that led to these requirements, and if I may, and it seems to me that if the companies are subject to these requirements and the ec has the authority to enforce them, then that should dramatically reduce the risk posed by the die hub. Thank you.
88 Thank you, councilor. Councilor Smith, specific to this panel.
89 Yes. Thank you. I want to go back to something that you said. You said you're only responsible for in the fence kinds of things. So who is responsible for outside the fence? Is that the Multnomah county or the city of Portland?
90 Councilor Smith it is a complex web of agencies that tom armstrong and others summarized. So there isn't one answer to that. We're all responsible for, for parts of it sometimes overlapping.
91 Okay, but you were very clear and very specific that you only do inside. And so I want to I, I think we need some sort of map or cheat sheet that, that we can have to see who's responsible for what. Because, you know, most of us would probably say call deq. So thank you.
92 Thank you.
93 Councilor Zimmerman.
94 Thank you. Been emergency management adjacent for a good part of my career. And so minimizing risk is grand in the large scope. But that risk we could be successful. And I could still lose a significant portion of my district. I'll put it that way. Right. In terms of the way that that term is used. So I'm trying to understand just from, from if we have mitigated to the point where no barrel of oil spills or unmitigated, I think is the term you used. Somewhat related to councilor Smith's point in terms of the overlapping priorities, that doesn't mean that we were successful from necessarily the grander public's perspective, because if we haven't spilled any oil, but we court forest park on fire, deq might say we were successful in our mitigation efforts, and we were pretty terrible in our emergency management efforts. And that's not on you. I'm just trying to understand. We've we've had all these roll out of different groups who have this overlapping responsibility, and it can be a little bit difficult to understand what lever to pull when we come up to the solutions discussion, so that we are relying on the information from the right bureaus, the right departments, right agencies, federal, state and local to help us figure out this this leverage. But I, I want to I want to make sure that I'm understanding from a deq perspective, from a seismic resiliency perspective. I think you said all are in compliance or are on their way into compliance right now as as it sits. Is that was that accurate? Is that what you said.
95 Councilor Zimmerman? Yes. All have made the submittals as required and we're working on reviewing them. So it's a process more than a sure anything else.
96 And I and I, I certainly understand that. I'm glad. Am I by hearing that and knowing we have a variety of different types of fuels in the cea area. Right. Some I think if I've got my facts right, I think natural gas is in a gel form of some sort over in the tanks. Some things are in what I'll just call like layman's oil form, and others. I don't even know what the right word would be. We are when you're speaking, are you talking about policies that address all those types of fuels or only a certain type of fuel? As it relates? And it sounds like it's very related to bad product touching the earth, either ground or water.
97 Councilor Zimmerman, thank you for the question. That's a good one, because it does show that the different entities have different thresholds, to we, the Oregon law. You know, it's defined in the legislation from 2022, is about oil of a really broadly defined definition of oil, including asphalt, for example, the northwest natural facility, the large storage facility there is included in our statute sets the our regulatory authority at 2 million gallons, paralleling but not identical to the city 2 million gallon threshold. You heard about this morning, too, but that's why we have 22 or 17. Excuse me, the in the state, those are the facilities with over 2 million gallons of storage capacity. And there's many smaller ones, including in the sci hub.
98 And last question and thanks, madam president. If deq had the authority, is there a place in Portland that the agency has identified that would say this is a better location for this hub to exist than where it currently exists? Given what we heard from portland's emergency management earlier.
99 Councilor Zimmerman. And that's that's a broader question than deq. At this point. We have not been tasked or worked on alternatives. Our goal is to make the existing storage safe.
100 Thanks for that, I appreciate it.
101 Councilor Clark.
102 Just a quick question, madam president. So hi, mike. Thanks for being here today. So let me just understand, the bill required that the responsible parties submit information about their tanks. And following that, a mitigation plan. Is that right?
103 Councilor. Correct. Correct.
104 It's two steps.
105 Correct.
106 So because I was under the impression that not all of them had responded with the first part. And so some of them actually have submitted the information or all of them the information about their tanks and secondly, their mitigation plans. You have all their mitigation plans in hand or you're waiting for them.
107 Councilor Clark, all the facilities submitted information as they had, which varying degrees of completeness and the assessment information is about the geotechnical work for the facility as well as the structural work defining the equipment and its integrity. So they all submitted something. Some of them are very thin, some of them are much more robust. That's the process we're working through. Nobody has submitted. Well, only the port of Portland has submitted mitigation design work for the airport fuel tanks that we've approved.
108 Great. Well, that's what I wanted to clarify, is that there were different degrees of information submitted. Not all of them have really complied yet. And that mitigation is the next step. But you're reviewing the very first step at this point.
109 Counselor Clark. Correct. When I said all in compliance, it was in that it meant to be in the context of with our deadlines, which are incremental.
110 And it could be incomplete information. All right. Thank you. Thank you, madam president.
111 Just following up on that for those submissions that are thinner and are perhaps not as complete as others, will deq continue to follow up until we have sufficient information? Or is there a point at which you say that's close enough? How how thorough will you require folks to be?
112 Council president, we expect them all to be complete and robust for defining the geotechnical as well as the mechanical issues. And we'll work through iterative loops, setting deadlines based on our judgment about how long it will take to accomplish a task. To follow up those deadlines are how we enforce and where we would where we would have to draw a line if, in our judgment, a submittal isn't completed in a timely manner, that's when we would enforce.
113 Thank you. It looks like we don't have other questions in the queue. Counselor Clark, for later. Okay. For later. Perfect. We don't have other questions in the queue for now. Thank you both so much for being here today. We will turn now to the state emergency management panel. If we could get. Jonna papathanasiou back up. And I apologize if I mispronounced your last name. And we have mary ann christian available now as well. Okay, jonna, why don't you get started then? Thank you.
114 Fantastic. Thank you. Mayor. Madam president, members of council. For the record, my name is john efthymiou and I am your Oregon state resilience officer. Thank you for inviting me to join you today and for letting me follow mike kortenhoef, who I think spoke well to the program at deq that's currently for seismic fuel tank stability. I'd like to, if I can, take a moment to reflect on how far we've come in our work on the cei hub so far, although today certainly illustrates that there is much left to be done, I think it's worth remembering that in 2012, when the department of geology and mineral industries first issued their study on seismic fuel tank risk in the critical energy infrastructure hub, it was a complete shock to many people in Oregon, including many neighbors and folks who live in linnton and the level of risk there, I think, stunned all of us, and it's really because of effective and persistent advocacy on the part of neighbors, on part of environmental groups, and also on the part of many folks, some in this room to advance, to advance safety at the cii hub, to the place where we are now. And I think commissioner Novick was really correct in noting that the 2022 bill, senate bill 1567, that adopted the seismic fuel tank stability rules, was a hugely forward for the state of Oregon. That standard of minimizing risk means that when the plans are implemented in ten years, that the minimum reportable spill is 42 gallons. And that and it's the design will be that no tank in the cei hub spills up that amount, that minimum reportable spill, which means tanks in the cei hub will be, by design, safer than the average gas station in terms of the amount of oil they're allowed to spill. That's surprising. Now, ten years is probably ten years too long for if you live near those tanks. And I know many folks feel that way, and certainly other folks have highlighted today other opportunities to ensure accountability and increase safety in the decade between now and when the retrofits are done. I think it's also worth highlighting that even when the tanks are fully retrofitted in the future, that there will be some outstanding safety risks. And the first one that comes to my mind is around the pipeline itself. As tom said, the pipeline is running almost 100% full 100% of the time, down from the washington's olympic peninsula. It that pipeline was built sections in the 50s and in the 60s, and so that the pipeline itself does not have seismic strengthening in most parts. It's interstate commerce. So it's regulated by the pipeline and hazardous materials safety administration under the us department of transportation. If anybody still works there. And I think it's a matter of but I think there's a potential for federal advocacy on that issue, because it really feels like the city of Portland and the state of Oregon have done their part in the places where they have regulatory purview to increase safety, and the pipeline is something that we absolutely need federal partnership to increase the safety. The other risk that I would highlight that will continue is that although the tanks are designed to not spill, they're also not designed to be accessible necessarily after an earthquake. And so we would have a tremendous fuel shortage across the state at a time when we really need fuel for first responders and for public works to do the heavy work of moving debris and getting Oregon back moving. The Oregon department of energy has a plan around fuel resilience, and that talks about the need to increase fuel storage, not to build a new sci hub and make it somebody else's problem, but to increase fuel storage at places like county public works yards at hospital backup generation places that will need fuel in the immediate aftermath of an earthquake, so that we have sort of a more dispersed strategy that can also be a more resilient strategy for fuel in emergency response. So that's another place that the state is playing a role. But the last thing I'd like to maybe notice is that although I think we're all super clear about what we don't want in the cei hub, this is also a place that I see as offering tremendous opportunity. The retrofits that are going to be required by the state over the next decade means that the incremental cost of maintaining tanks in the ci hub, frankly, is going to go up because retrofits cost money. And at the same time, our consumption of liquid fuel, especially unleaded gas for cars, is going down because people are moving to electrics. And that means it's reasonable to assume that not every tank there will be retrofitted, but that the ci hub will, in some fashion, shrink its footprint. That is a fantastic stretch of the Willamette river. It that's super close to downtown. It has the opportunity to create much more jobs and economic opportunity than it does currently. You know, tank fuel tank farms, they have high environmental costs, but they not a lot of people work there. There's not a lot of value added for fuel storage. Certainly in other ways. Fuel is an engine of our economy, but there isn't, I think, an opportunity to see redevelopment in that area that if we have can take a long view, would be a huge benefit for Portland. And also it's a stretch of river that right now has almost no public access. The uses that are there now are seen as really incompatible with even public coming to look at the river or be near it, but that's something that could also change in the future. So I think just as we recognize we're at a place where change for the cei hub is inevitable for a lot of reasons, that change also presents an opportunity. And I think it would be delightful for the city, the county and the state to all together imagine something that is what we do want in the ci hub, because I think that that is a potential. That's a future we could work towards together. And that's the comments I wanted to share with you all. Pause now in case there are questions. Thank you.
115 Thank you. And do we have anybody from the state fire marshal's office who has been able to join us? Okay. Councilor Green is your comment for gina or general comment? Excuse me. General counselor Clark, general and councilor Koyama Lane yours is a general comment. Perfect. John, I don't think we have any specific comments for you right now, but thank you so much for being with us today. I know that the work that you do coordinating our emergency response statewide and thinking about the cei hub and relationship with our needs statewide is a really important piece of this puzzle. We appreciate you being part of our panel today. At this point. Councilors, we have about 45 minutes left. I know a lot of people have general comments or questions for some of our city folks, so we will get to as much as we can. And for folks from the city who presented earlier, just be ready to jump in. If a comment is something that you are best posed to answer. Councilor Green, why don't you kick us off?
116 Thank you, madam president. My questions are related to the city's role with respect to the kind of presentation that we heard, but also in related to our comp plan and the lux that we recently issued for zenith. And so I think one of the things that I'm having a hard time with is in the presentation, we've got a number of slides from pbem that present maps of both liquefaction risk, but then also wildfire risk. And, you know, when I was reviewing the February 3rd land use compatibility statement for zenith energy and the city's response to how it is in compliance with the 2035 comprehensive plan, it speaks to, specifically the section on policies related to hazards, as essentially saying, well, this repositioned facility doesn't present any hazards or is not. It's fine and it's safe. And one of the comments here specifically says zenith property is flat. It's outside the 100 year and 500 year floodplain areas, and it's outside any mapped landslide hazard, landslide hazard area or wildfire risk area. But it's hard for me to imagine that that's really a sort of adequate statement, because, you know, pbem is saying this isn't a wildfire hazard area. It's adjacent to it. There's also no mention of liquefaction risk in that statement. So I'm hoping that we can have a little bit of a discussion here on how, you know, this, the psi presentation and the and the risks that it presents. And I'm and I'm glad to know that we're going to go forward in a forward looking think process. But how does that coincide with the issuance of this new lux? Do we have anyone here prepared to speak to that.
117 Online?
118 I can, I can I can talk a little bit about how about the slides around the risk that that have been put together. So councilman Green, when we in emergency response are talking about hazards and risk, we're talking in regards to the community and what their concerns are. So when I say a wildfire risk, it potentially impact and is needed to be looked into in relation to psi hub. When we are looking into evacuation planning, let's say for linnton neighborhood and an, any particular hazard that happens within neighborhood that requires us to evacuate people or give them a pre-identified evacuation route. We are unable to do that because sending people in a direction which could potentially be on fire is not the best. That that's why there's that's the big reason why we don't have a very specific evacuation plan for communities around linnton neighborhood. So I need to look into the particular document that you mentioned that that city testified in terms of risk. I have not looked into it, but these are the risks that we have documented in our community wildfire protection plan that the county has lead on, and in our general natural hazard mitigation action plan that the city has owned. So we're looking into risks that are associated not just with, see, I have a hub as a facility, but see hazards around it that would require to be looked into if we were to do a comprehensive hazard response plan for cei hub. And the reason I also mentioned particularly. The wildfire risk or the industrial fire risk, a lot of what happens post cascadia and how the fuel gets released would depend on the air where the air plume is, and that could shift. We have studies that indicate where it's likely to go, but that could shift in terms of where the air is flowing and that could be towards the forest park, could be towards in the different direction. So I wanted to highlight that part, that this is a complex, kind of complex facility to study. And it cannot be just liquefaction. It cannot be just fire within the facility. It needs to be looked into. This, all these hazards that touch upon upon the upon the facility. And that's why I was specifically talking about those hazards there, more that I didn't talk about, because even as we talk about spills, we talk about on the surface spill, which gets into our sewer system. So bts becomes responsible. But then the waterway spills are slightly different up until bonneville dam, which is where the kind of coast guards tidal boundaries kind of come into picture, that we would have a different agency that would kind of help lead the response for that versus on the surface response. So it is a very kind of complex, interwoven, multi-agency response. And unfortunately, when there are so many agencies or so many hazards involved there, like no one like wants to be the lead. And that's where emergency management comes, comes into picture. But that's the context of highlighting some of the hazards that are associated with the with the with the sci hub. And I'll invite our bureau of planning and sustainability partners to maybe add more context to it.
119 Yeah. Thanks. Rasheed. Kim, are you online? Hi, kim, can you walk through the staff analysis on the lux, please? Thank you.
120 Sure. Hi, I'm kimberly talent. I'm the land services division manager for Portland permitting and development. I do have to apologize. I did not come prepared to talk specifically about the zenith application, given that it's been a notice of intent to appeal has been filed with luba. I'd like to consult with our city attorneys first before I respond, and can get you any additional details at a later time.
121 Thank you kimberly, and I won't ask a question specific to that. That would put you in a tough spot with the notice of intent to appeal. It might be quasi judicial, but what I would say this is broader. I guess my question would be, do we have a practice of when we when we issue these permits, do we have a practice of working with pbem to interpret the comprehensive plan or, or is that just a separate or do you do that internally within the permitting department? Because it doesn't. From what I'm understanding here, it does not look like pbem consulted on the area of this lux that spoke to these risks. Thank you.
122 I'm not. Yeah, sure. And I'm not aware of consulting with pbem on the prior applications. I would say in terms of what we in pmd do on these types of permits and applications, as we apply the zoning code. And so that doesn't have a any regulations where we're reaching out to them to confirm things.
123 Thank you. But I but I will say that this lux was designed to say that this is consistent with the 2035 comprehensive plan, which lays out policies associated with risks. So in that regard, it's not just the zoning code interpretation, it is an interpretation of the consistency with the 2035 comprehensive plan. And so I'll just leave that comment there. I don't want to use up too much time. But thank you.
124 Thank you, councilor, councilor Clark.
125 Thank you, madam president. I have a couple of comments and a couple of questions. First of all, I just want to thank all the. Linnton neighbors, the ladies of linnton, for all the work that you've done. Because if it weren't for you, we wouldn't be here today. If it weren't for citizen action, we would not be here having this discussion today. So I express my appreciation to you and all the other people who have spoken today. As somebody who also lives in a subduction zone, I appreciate the level of anxiety that we live with every day, and I want to express my frustration about this whole process and how long it takes to get anything done. My biggest takeaway today is mr. Noel's comment that we are underprepared and that no one wants to take the lead. Waiting for a decade for the mitigation plans. I understand it's a part of the law, but it doesn't provide me with much confidence or security. This is a tangled web of governments that have different responsibilities, and I wanted to know, is there a table where all these folks come together, all these agencies, to discuss the issue and to figure out who will take the lead or how we take the lead? And that's not necessarily a rhetorical question. I just wanted to know if in the FEMA, in the FEMA grant that we received, is there the possibility that the city of Portland can provide that table for everyone to come to so that we can maybe even expedite some of this? I hope we're not limited in the FEMA grant to merely rezoning that, that we can pull everyone together, that we can take that responsibility.
126 No. And you're absolutely right that when we get into long range planning and talking about potentially changing comprehensive plan policies or zoning code, we can set a table that's inclusive.
127 Well, madam president, I hope we can do that sooner rather than later to set that table. I don't know why we have to wait in order to do that.
128 We can take that up.
129 Councilor, I think that there are a number of folks around the dais who were nodding yes, as you were saying that, and this could be something that having one of us help on may expedite. So it sounds like you may be stepping up to that, but I know you have a colleague to your right and one online who chair committee that looks at this also. So I would encourage us to have some conversations in the future about who might be able to help with that. And when I say the future, I mean the very near future. Councilor Koyama Lane.
130 Thank you, madam president. Thank you for everyone here. To everyone here who is here to discuss the city's role with the cei hub. This is really top of mind for a lot of my constituents. I literally rode the bus this morning to city hall and had a constituent on the bus talking with me about this very topic. And also, thank you for these presentations. There's a lot of history. This can be a big, dense topic, and I think whoever made these presentations did a good job of laying out the information and kind of a one on one manner. My questions today are related to the city council ordinance 191896, which was passed unanimously last September. Thank you for this councilor Ryan. This ordinance specifically accepted the receipt of $406,000 from the Oregon state office of emergency management, and then was also supplemented by 45,000 from the city for two staff positions to develop amendment and code change proposals. Let me know if I'm incorrect about any any of this. The title of the ordinance captures the purpose well, except and appropriate grant for $405,720 from the Oregon department of emergency management for the fossil fuel terminal zoning and comprehensive plan amendments project. So I would like to I would like clarification on two related provisions. So I'll quote directly from the ordinance itself, which specifically addresses community impacts and community involvement. So it says the bureau of planning and sustainability will consult with other public agencies, academia, business and community groups to identify potential code and policy concepts. Bts will undertake a public involvement process to review the concepts, which will include stakeholders, stakeholder interviews, focus groups, community meetings, and web based information and opportunities for feedback. Public involvement will continue with the legislative adoption process with notices of public hearings, with opportunities for written and oral testimony before the planning commission. Then the second part is that the budget also included a, from what I understand, a supplemental materials with the ordinance, $104,000 for public involvement. So I want to know if and how constituents, groups, neighborhoods have been involved in advocacy up to this point around the cei hub. I'm looking out. I think a lot of these people here are folks that we would hope are are being included, brought into discussions related to developing these concepts, proposals, plans around the cei hub. We've heard in a few meetings that dps is working on these plans. We then have a work session on March 17th. Here we are hearing about these plans. So my wonderings is, you know, about the ordinance has a requirement for community involvement from the point of conception of ideas. And I'm wondering how that's going and if it hasn't really happened. And we're starting the conversation and presenting ideas right here, even only as draft proposals, I am concerned that like framework is being laid in which further amendment discussions will take place, and really want to make sure that the public is part of foundational steps. So we know the ordinance calls clearly for the public to be engaged. I see the people who are going to respond are coming on up, as well as being involved in later processes. So we in a lot of meetings, we've acknowledged we have we need to be building community trust around this topic. We need to make sure that community members are involved and that the engagement is real. And so I'd like to hear where where the city is at with community involvement as outlined in this ordinance.
131 I'll just start again. For the record, my name is Eric engstrom, the interim director at the bureau of planning and sustainability. In general, our planning policies call for public involvement at every step of a legislative project like this. So, as you said, we should be engaging in public engagement early on to develop concepts. Typically, once concepts are developed, we also have opportunity for comment on those concepts. And then once something is formalized through the planning commission, there's of course opportunity for public hearings. But we always start much earlier. I'm going to turn it over to tom to talk about where specifically we are with that grant project.
132 Yes, thanks. And it is the case what you're we're getting started and we're transitioning staff, many of which help prepare the presentation today. And so it is a it is a process where up to this point it's been informal conversations with community and community advocate representatives. And now will start a more formal process with formal meetings and outreach to generate these policy ideas and different concepts that will become more concrete proposals as we move through the spring and into the summer.
133 Okay, I just want to encourage you to lean on us counselors, especially the ones that are on related committees. We are, you know, connected with constituents, and we are going to hear from constituents if they're not feeling engaged. And even just looking around the room, I hear people kind of being like, yeah, we want to be included. So yeah, I'm I'm happy to hear that that's going to happen. I wish that it had happened before this point, but I look forward to hearing about next steps.
134 And councilor, if I may also just add that as the now that we're to the point where the council's committees are up and running, I think we would love to engage with the appropriate committees on during the early scoping phase of this project and have those conversations.
135 Thank you.
136 This is something that I think both those committees, as well as councilors with district ties, are very interested in. So the more that we can know where that process is and maybe get some regular updates about how that's going, the easier it will be for us to communicate with constituents. And I would be remiss, counselors, in not mentioning that as we were talking previously about having somebody from our council take the lead to make sure that this work continues quickly. Councilor Kanal was nodding vigorously. Also, I just was pointed the other way as I was looking, so I didn't see it at first. Councilor Kanal you are up in the queue.
137 Thank you, madam president.
138 Thank you everyone for putting this together. A couple of quick notes. I will have three questions. One to tom armstrong, one to mr. Narwhal and one to director engstrom. I'm grateful we're doing this. I'd like to the next time we have a council conversation on this, see non-governmental experts in the future, as well as community input opportunities. I'd also like to note the community and public safety committee would ideally be involved in this, in addition to climate and transportation and infrastructure. When we do get to those conversations, I also want to note that there was the idea raised of moving the cei hub within the city, which was surprising. I'm happy to discuss working with other jurisdictions for to look outside the city for new sites, but after looking at the maps and seeing that all the large areas of industrial land besides the cei hub itself are in d2, that implies to me that moving it within the city would mean moving it to d2, which is not just a no, but a hell no from me. And thank you for mentioning redeveloping the waterfront. Finally, I want to just to kind of ease into the first question. Note that there's been a lot of talk about wildfire risk, but not enough about industrial fire risk. There's briefly mentioned on two of the slides, slide 31 explicitly, but it wasn't brought up as much. So I just want to note that first question to mr. Armstrong. Why are only six facilities covered by franchise agreements when we've seen some of the others listed in these documents that they're significantly more than six? Could you just clarify that?
139 Yeah. The six facilities that were listed under the franchise agreement, they're they're the ones that operate the pipeline connections that are under the street and in the public right of way. So the other the other facilities connect to those pipelines, but they don't actually operate the pipelines, if you will.
140 Got it. Okay.
141 Thank you. So from that particular type of jurisdiction is.
142 For the franchise agreement aspect of it, those are the six that are responsible for the pipes in the street.
143 Thank you.
144 Mr. Narwhal. You mentioned at the that at the local level, funding from cei hub businesses for a dedicated planner to coordinate local and regional agencies would be advantage and to be honest advantageous and to be honest needed. Could you speak first to what the mechanism is here? You mentioned it would take a council mandate.
145 Yeah, I just I have I would I would be honest, I haven't done the like full assessment of what council can authorize to private private facility. And maybe someone else from my team can talk more about this. But what I was, I was I mentioned was, as you all kind of noticed, that there are so many agencies that are involved even to efficiently respond to and to not the zoning and coding part of things, the emergency response side of things. And there are agencies that I did not put on that slide because I wasn't sure or clear on what their role would be. So I didn't want to I did not want to give information that I wasn't comfortable with. So there's definitely resources needed to put together an emergency response plan that's more dedicated to cei hub as a facility, and also communities that would be more directly impacted by, by this, by. Accident that I have in terms of getting that resource. Right now, we have 0.5 fte as a planner that is responsible for planning across all all all those plans for all of the city. So we're we're under-resourced. One of the bill, one of the legislative item that the ec is working on, I believe it was 2151, which talks about expanding the hazard mitigation funds use, which would allow us to apply for more grants and funding opportunities to do to get access to that fund and potentially for uses like this. And as we were preparing this presentation, there was an idea floated that if we can get council on board to help private business c.e.hubb fund a position within emergency management that could help us coordinate these resources and agencies and roles and responsibilities at all the levels that we should pursue it. I can get back to you with details of how that would work out, and what mechanism we need to use, but I'm sorry I don't have that ironed out right now.
146 Yeah.
147 I would love to hear that, to get that information. For those who don't know, pbem has been getting cut year after year after year and is down to, I believe, 13 fte in total roughly. That may be maybe one off in either direction there, but I would love to help assist with that. And this seems like a really good way to do it. So having that mechanism would be good to know. And my question is effectively why we would stop at a dedicated planner and not have a conversation about an industrial fire brigade, because and this relates to the question that councilor Smith asked about the port of Portland, we have a the port has or the airport, I should say the port of Portland has dedicated specialized firefighters for the types of fires that occur at an airport. When an emergency happens. We do not have the capability for the types of fires that occur at a facility like the cei hub. That's something that other cities have done in a couple different ways. Some do it internally, some do it where the companies collaborate on on developing their own. I think the best way to ensure public trust on this particular thing would have it be within the city, and I would love to, to pursue understanding what that would take and, and the types of costs associated with it. Obviously, in collaboration with both leadership and labor at Portland fire and rescue. So that that's the question I have there. And so, mr. Narwhal, as you're looking into it, please look at it at the scale necessary to not just fund a single fte as a planner in terms of that mechanism, please. I'll let you respond. And then I have the question for director engstrom.
148 No, I was just going to say I will look into it and get back to you. Thank you.
149 Thank you, director engstrom. My question was actually going to be very similar to the council vice president's a moment ago, but I just want to follow up on that. And note that your response to the council vice president a moment ago was about community input on plans in the form of public comment. And I just want to note that there is a distinction between that and what the ordinance actually refers to, which is comprehensive community engagement and public comment is insufficient to check that box. It is necessary. It's a it's a part of it. But I'd like to ask about the parts of it that are beyond that. It talks about public involvement in the exhibit to that ordinance in a in a more holistic way than waiting to react until there's a plan developed internally. Now, certainly, there's already been decades of community input on this. And I agree with councilor Clark that community members are the reason we're even talking about this at all, specifically in linton. But I'd like to understand, beyond the reactive, when the decision is 95% made already form of input, what other forms of public involvement we intend to use that $104,000 for sure.
150 Thank you for the question. And to be just to make sure I'm clear, I apologize if I wasn't the engagement strategy for the planning work we do is not just commenting on after a draft is out, we will do public involvement in the early stages, in the formative stages, to solicit feedback on the direction that we're going to take the project before things are written down.
151 Thank you. And I guess just the clarification follow up on this. My understanding is that the deadline for completion of that project is February 1st of next year. Are we on track for that timeline?
152 Tom, would you like to come up and talk about the timeline?
153 Yeah, the terms of the grant program, the first deadline that is in the grant now is February 1st, and we'll start working towards that. There also is within the program the option to request extensions within that. If the if the decision making process goes beyond that deadline.
154 It's not unusual in a legislative project that's grant funded to have some extension of time, because we don't control the pace of the legislative adoption. So often the work we do under the grant is the preparing the material to enter that deliberative process.
155 So, so is at at.
156 Present, do you have an intention to or a need to request that extension, or can we expect that that at least the public involvement portion of this will occur by February 1st, 2026?
157 Oh, the public involvement will occur by that time. And I think part of that, that community conversation is what will drive the timeline in terms of what we hear from the community, how we develop those concepts. And then once we get into the more formal public hearing, how long does the planning commission take to deliberate and make a recommendation? Council? How long does the council committee process to get to that will determine the ultimate timeline of this project?
158 Great.
159 Thank you very much. Thanks, madam president.
160 Councilor Ryan.
161 Yes, thank you, madam president. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for the presentation. It's the first time I heard a big comprehensive cei hub meeting focused conversation that included multiple agencies. So that's a step in the right direction. I'm going to kind of rift off a little bit about what councilor Clark mentioned, which is where's the table? And specifically, I was taken by the legacy challenge that you started off with tom this morning. And then I want to just say that listening to all of this for the last two hours and 15 minutes was we kept coming back to the fact that there's really no mitigation that's going to survive the big one. It's the big deal. Is, is there a place to relocate it? How would we do that? Oh my god, what a big, expensive ordeal this will be. And yet then you would hear from others. That said, conversations on where to relocate has not yet started. So just take that in. We're an area that's struggled for a couple of decades trying to build a bridge across the columbia. So we know we struggle when it comes to big, challenging legacy, challenging issues like this. So it kind of gets back to that question is, is this a goal for all of you? And if it is, who's taking charge to convene that table? And although I have a lot of empathy for what's going on with all federal agencies this morning, that is the one group that's not here today. And clearly it will be federal, state and local that would need to come together to make this decision. So clearly, I don't think anyone's saying I want this in my backyard, although there are parts of the state where the infrastructure could probably be built, some would probably welcome the revenue that would come in from to, to their, to their coffers. And we will have our own loss of that revenue when it goes away. What a wonderful problem to have. So my question is, does anyone have the political will to take leadership on setting up that table? And I look to the head of deq, I looked to the head of these bureaus at the county, the city who get paid to think about this daily. Who's having that conversation? Where is it? It's a it's fascinating to sit up here and keep hearing that as a theme, but then you don't hear any vision on where that table is. And is it actually a goal or is it just going to be a threat? We're going to talk about?
162 I might.
163 Suggest that we ask jonah to weigh in on this, as well as our state chief resilience officer.
164 Thank you, madam president.
165 John, are you still with us?
166 I oh, can you hear me? Yes.
167 We can.
168 Awesome. The question.
169 Relocating the cei hub just to.
170 Yeah.
171 The big the big thing that everyone likes to say. But you don't ever hear any follow up about action and who's actually going to take charge. Yeah. Just tell me a little bit more about that conversation that you almost have daily. Yeah.
172 I'm delighted to share, but I'm afraid my answer isn't to relocate the cei hub. The cei hub is this is not going to be popular, but it's located at the confluence of a river, two rail lines and a pipeline, all of which are extremely hard to move. So the idea of relocating the cei hub would, at a minimum, mean redirecting or lengthening the pipeline. And I think that the process to accomplish that would be longer than the timeline for the future of unleaded gas and cars. I think it would take much longer than a decade, which is what we're looking at to retrofit the pipes that are there. I think that my hope is that we if we're going to put energy and resources to not facing risks of the cei hub, than it isn't to visit the risk of a giant fuel terminal terminal on some other community in Oregon, but is seeking out how we can accelerate a transition away from fossil fuels so that the pipeline so the ci hub doesn't go somewhere else, but it goes away, it shrinks, and the fuel that we still do need for emergency response and public works is decentralized, which is in a lot of ways a more resilient strategy and is stored in different places around Oregon.
173 Thank you john. That was very clear and concrete. It'd be refreshing if you could convene a group of leaders in each jurisdiction to see if they agree with you, and if we can then start aligning our focus on what's next. Then it just feels really it feels very scattered. And that's not ever going to move the work along in something really complex. We're looking for leadership from those in these bureaus today to come together and provide what that action plan is.
174 I'd be so delighted to be a part of that. Thank you.
175 Mr. Engstrom. Did you have something to add?
176 Yeah, I'll just add that bts is happy under the under the auspices of the project that we have funded through the FEMA grant to, at least in the near term, host a table and work with the state to have that some aspects of that multi-agency discussion.
177 Thank you for that commitment. Councilor Novick.
178 Thank you, madam president. First of all, as to councilor Ryan's comment that no mitigation is going to be sufficient to provide the big one, it's my understanding that the mitigation that deq is requiring is going to be to ensure that those oil tanks do survive the big one, and don't spill, or. Mr. Kortenhoef, can you confirm that?
179 That's correct.
180 Okay. Also, I just wanted to say that although ten years is a long time, my assumption is that retrofitting these tanks is going to be a big fat construction project or a series of them, and that takes time. So we might want to have enough back up at some point to talk about whether it could be speeded up, but I frankly am relieved at the idea that 10 or 12 years from now, assuming the earthquake hasn't happened, the risk of massive oil spills will have been reduced. I or hopefully eliminated. I also wanted to note that the reason the sci hub exists is that there is demand for fossil fuels. Transportation is the biggest source of carbon emissions in the city of Portland, and as john has said, we can reduce the amount of fuel that's in the ci hub by reducing our demand for fossil fuels. We can do that in the city of Portland by making investments in charging stations and subsidizing purchase of electric cars, by investing in transit, by investing in bike ped infrastructure. And we have a source of revenue for that. The Portland clean energy fund, which originally was envisioned to only bring in 30 million a year, but now at 200 million a year, is enough that we could actually make progress on those things. So that is one reason that I'm prepared to cross swords with anybody who suggest we should start rating the clean energy fund to deal with our current budget problems, by spending it on things that have little or nothing to do with climate change. Finally, I just wanted to say that my crude, pun intended assumption was that the risk of fire from the cei hub is largely a matter of being afraid that the tanks would explode and the oil would catch fire, so the tanks don't explode. That wouldn't happen. But maybe I'm wrong about that. Maybe somebody can enlighten me on that. Thank you.
181 I know we don't have the state fire marshal here. I do see some folks in the back. I know you're trying to hide, but is there anything that you could add about the fire risk? Please go ahead and introduce yourselves.
182 Yes.
183 Steve bregman, deputy chief of special operations for Portland fire and rescue.
184 Lieutenant brian prophet.
185 Hazmat coordinator for Portland fire and rescue.
186 So I think first, I'd like to go back to what councilor Kanal mentioned with the industrial fire brigade and touch on that very briefly. He mentioned that we don't have the capability or the maybe alluded to it towards the subject matter expertise. I would say that's actually not the case. We do have that capability. We station 24 specializes in that. We have a specialized foam unit there and other equipment. The members there travel to texas to train at texas a&m. University. Tech's in fuel storage firefighting activities. So while we have that capability, I think what would be more accurate to say is we lack some capacity, and that probably goes across the emergency management spectrum of the pd, the planning, the organizing, the equipping, training and exercising. So we have the capability. I think we need to look at the capacity for that in terms of the.
187 Just so folks here know, station 24, I believe that's the swan island station, is that correct?
188 Yes, it is the swan island station. Yes. Thank you. And all of our firefighters across the 31 stations have an awareness in fighting fuel fires. So one station truly specializes in it. And then there's a general awareness across the other stations.
189 All right. And to answer. Councilor novak's question, the tanks don't explode. The earthquake could rupture the tanks. And what product is in those tanks would spill out. There are all of the facilities in the cib have containment. Dikes and capabilities for containing most of the product. That product, once it does rupture out of the tank, there is the potential for it to catch fire. Yes. From anything else that would be, you know, electrical or a secondary fire within the area. So there is the potential for that. You know, that potential. Also the containment is could be breached within the earthquake due to the liquefaction and everything else, which is the fear for it to get into the rivers. Does that answer?
190 Yeah. I mean, what I was thinking is that to the extent that I was assuming that to the extent that there is a risk of fire from the cy hub of an earthquake, it would be a fire by the oil catching fire. And I just wanted to clarify that that's the case. And or is there some other fire risk that cia poses aside from the oil catching fire?
191 No, I think most of it would be the oil catching fire. Yes.
192 Thank you both for coming up. I appreciate it.
193 Certainly.
194 You know what? Before councilor Kanal, I want to make sure that folks who haven't gotten to ask yet. So I think we're good for now, but we may bring you back up, counselor Zimmerman and counselors, if you have the time to run about five minutes over, I think we can get to everybody in the next ten minutes. Counselor Zimmerman.
195 I think it's probably for donnie. I'm just curious if the tenants of this area are betting that a major disaster won't happen. And so remaining there is feasible in their estimation? Or is relocating more expensive than dealing with the aftermath of a catastrophic, catastrophic event? Or do they believe that they're the first collection of corporations who have combined to defeat mother nature?
196 Thank you for the question.
197 A little sarcastic, but also a little bit trying to be about costs here. And it is related to the county's presentation.
198 Correct. And I might invite john to go through some of the mechanics if he's still around. I think one of the strategies of the of the county's responding is that it's a two tier system that encourages, like those early investments to mitigate that will drive down the costs that they would be, you know, contributing to. So that's one component. I don't think that anybody at this point should be calculating any sort of victory over mother nature. I think so far, mother nature is winning the game, for better or for worse, in terms of our emissions, as far as what these particular facilities are contemplating, I think we need to see what the dx's reports are in compliance with. Those seismic upgrades are going to be going forward. But I think there is, per tom's, the memo in your packet, per tom's tom's presentation, we are seeing a reduction in in fuel usage in general as people electrify. And to jonah's point, john's point, excuse me, there are still going to be fuel needs and how we deploy those fuels around the city and the region are the next step. So if they want to be at the table for those, that's their prerogative. But the reality is, is that the cei facility, as we know it is going to change. And it has to. That's not there's not an option one way or the other.
199 Okay, I'm kind of approaching this, and I hope that my colleagues will approach this as a really it's a two pronged topic here. One is the mitigation and response. And two is the more long term sustainability aspect changing fuels. But let's remember this presentation started by saying that the pipeline is already at capacity. And that's why we get ships and trains. And so if we reduce eventually the ships and trains might stop. But the pipeline is I think my point here is we are decades away. We are not one decade away. We are decades away from that kind of transition where these these this area becomes obsolete in terms of American way of life. And so I'm trying to be, you know, councilor Ryan's questions got right to the heart of it. It doesn't sound like there's an appetite to move, that it's really not feasible. And I think we need to start talking far more clearly that it isn't going to move. And I'm pretty disappointed by that. But that was one of the first statements that we got from the governor's representative that this is unlikely to occur. I think we need to grapple with that. I think that that long term strategy that I think some other committees can work on is important. But my hope for pbem, for fire, for others, is that we do start talking about mitigation. Mike, I wonder the last time and if we ever have had an exercise relative to a disaster in this zone, if we incorporated oregon's cbrne enhanced response force package or washington's herf package, which is about mass casualties, mass decontamination, that is a local resource. So I think it would be good for us to be clear eyed about what is realistic and what we can, what we can mitigate and try to prevent. I think to danny's point, I will be very interested in what deq report comes out, but I don't think we should stop there. My last request is that I hope that Portland emergency management will bring forward a budget proposal to specifically tell us how we are exercising related to this topic in the future, right? I think that will be helpful for us to start grappling our head around what it means. And the other thing I've lived here my entire life. I'm still a little unclear for how hellish liquefaction is, right? I've got one company who says my building can take a nine inch drop in the land. I don't know what that means. Right. I think some understanding. For what do we expect to occur? What will the Willamette waterfront look like after an event, so that we can be more clear eyed? And then I will push back a little bit on the public involvement piece. I think we've gotten to the point now where we can do public involvement for the next ten years, and we'll be having this exact same conversation. I want to hear from experts in the field scientists, geologists, emergency managers, etc. About solutions and not why we have a problem. I'm clear on that. Councilor Clark made it clear the ladies of linton have made that clear. I know we have a problem. I am looking for solutions based. I'm not looking for ten years of neighborhood meetings about the problem. We know, and this is not directed at you. It's a collective statement. So that's what I'm looking for. Pbem. I've given you a task I hope I'll see in the budget time. And then just to colleagues, I hope we can talk about the two pronged approach. Thanks.
200 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor Dunphy.
201 Thank you, my colleagues. You've done an amazing job of asking all the questions I was going to ask. There's one thing that is remaining for me, and it's simply an annoying fact about this spot. We keep hearin. Liquefaction. Anything built along the bank of a river is going to inherently be made out of sediments. But the Willamette river was, in the 50s, not an adequate deep water port. And the dredging of that port, in order to facilitate this commerce, the material was moved from the middle of the river to the bank of the river. They knocked it down so it was flat and they built oil tanks on top of it. It is literally the muck from the bottom of the river that sets the base for where these tanks are. I think that is really important for when folks are hearing liquefaction. We're talking about river muck that has been made relatively stable. That is insane to me that anybody thought that was a good idea. That is my only comment. I just want the public to make sure that we all are working with the same facts here.
202 Councilor Kanal can you do this in two minutes or less?
203 Yeah, I.
204 Just wanted to clarify. I think I may have misspoke earlier or implied a broader sense about industrial firefighting. Station 24 is across a bridge. It's 5.3 miles away. Driving from zenith. You know, each of the terminals has a different distance, but it's a few miles away driving. And one of the concerns that that comes up is that there may not be a functional bridge in the case of a, of a disaster. So my concern, I guess, remains that proximate firefighting capacity within the site, within the hub or immediately adjacent to it is sort of the question that I am trying to daylight here. So that's just a clarification. I really appreciate both the chief and lieutenant coming up and clarifying for me, because I was, I think, insufficiently precise there. But that's the question that I'm trying to understand here. And I know there are marine firefighting capabilities as well to explore, but I think it's a really important conversation to kind of bring up here, not just from the perspective of firefighting, but to mr. Narwhal's point about there are risks that are not just after the fact that we should be having these the people creating the risks pay for now. Right? We've been talking about risk bonding as an after the fact payout. And I think there's also the question of what happens now that there that creates lesser harm later if we're having folks pay for it. So that's my broader point and I will leave it at that. Thank you, madam president.
205 Thank you. Thank you to everybody who presented today and who has joined us. Thank you to the folks in the communities most affected by the cei hub, who are here with us today to hear the same information that we are hearing. I think we heard some really disturbing things. We heard again that this is not just a bad, but the worst place for these tanks to be, that we are unprepared, underprepared, and no one wants to take the lead, and that perhaps it's actually faster to mitigate than to build new tanks and pipelines and store the fuel elsewhere. We also heard some very heartening and helpful things, like the update on what deq is doing, which is actually a very big deal in terms of starting to create some protections for communities, though certainly not enough. I would just say that we cannot accept a generation long wait for safety for communities in our districts. And I think there's broad agreement across the dais about that. So I hope that today has allowed us to level set our background so that committees can start to take up conversations that we just scratched the surface of. I know there are at least three committees whose work may touch on this, possibly more, and we'll make sure to stay coordinated so that all of you both are experts in the public watching. Know where to hear what pieces of the conversation, and we're having a holistic conversation, possibly one with other entities coordinated by bts. It sounds like, as we move forward. Thank you all for being here, and I will close our work session.