Study says massive earthquake could cause catastrophic fuel leak on Portland’s Willamette River

If you’ve ever driven through a six-mile stretch of industrial northwest Portland on the west bank of the Willamette River, you’ve likely seen hundreds of large tanks. The area is known as the Center for Critical Energy Infrastructure. The vast majority of the gas, diesel, and jet fuel used in Oregon is stored or transported through this region. The ground beneath those tanks may look solid, but experts say it isn’t. The Earth is expected to become liquid when an earthquake hits the Cascadia subduction zone, and this would lead to an environmental catastrophe of gigantic proportions. This is one of the findings of a new report commissioned by Multnomah County and the City of Portland. Laura Marshall of Eco Northwest, who co-produced the study, spoke about the findings with Dave Miller at OPB’s Think Out Loud.

“The Center for Critical Energy Infrastructure is essentially a fuel tank farm, so 90% of Oregon’s liquid fuel supply comes through CEI,” Marshall explained. “Maybe your gasoline came from there.”

There are different types of fuel coming from 10 companies stocked on site. About 630 total tanks are used to hold the fuel used throughout the state.

“And the reason everything got here is one because it’s on the river,” Marshall said. “So there are barges that provide access. There is also a pipeline that goes down all the way from North Washington that supplies fuel that is pumped to tanks where it is stored and then distributed,”

County Commissioner Sharon Miran, who is also an emergency room physician, pushed for the study to be conducted in the first place.

“I’ve been through this area a lot and have always been curious about tanks,” Miran said. “They look pretty post-apocalyptic and ominous. Early in my first term, some community members from Lynton, where these tanks are, reached out to me.”

After years of public concern, the study was commissioned in 2020 following concerns about what a large and expected earthquake along the Cascadia subduction zone might do to the tanks.

“There aren’t many studies that are being done proactively like this,” Marshall said. “This is a unique situation as we know we are at risk of a massive earthquake in the Cascadia subduction zone.”

It is not known how old the tanks are. However, a number was built before the mid-1990s. Before 2004 earthquake standards were less stringent than they are now.

“Our models indicate that between 94 million and 194 million gallons of fuel will be released into the air, land, and water immediately and after an earthquake,” Marshall said.

People and businesses in the Linton neighborhood of Portland will face the direct effects of this disaster. It’s something that people in the area were aware of according to Marshall.

There is an extremely high risk of fire with a fuel leak. There are many sources of ignition such as malfunctioning power lines that may occur from earthquake as well as metal tanks in general, so metal scraping on metal. The effects of fire and earthquake are compounded by the inability of emergency responders to respond in the same way they would in the absence of an earthquake. “

Marshall described the hypothetical fuel spill as catastrophic. Some of the fuels will go into the air, and some of the heavier fuels will go into the Willamette River.

“There is a potential here to wipe out an entire salmon within a year,” Marshall said. “Many migratory birds at different times are used to nesting sites as well. So those are some environmental considerations.”

Unlike other catastrophic oil spills, this spill will coincide with an earthquake, creating an obstacle to cleaning up the environment.

“The response to the earthquake and the inability to use roads close to the river due to bridges and collapsed roads is greatly complicated by being able to get there at the speed needed to do clean-up and containment,” Marshall said.

This begs the question: Who will be responsible in the event of such a catastrophic event? Miran said it was unclear.

“A lot of this is compound because it’s a very vague organizational picture. There’s, you know, federal regulations, state regulation. The city has a lot of power based on land use and zoning, which is another kind of infrastructure authority, but you know,

Interruption, it’s a bit more fuzzy, but that’s one of the issues that’s really been highlighted in this report that we need to address. We need to all come together and say, OK, who’s going to happen, what do we need to know and how are we going to allocate responsibility? “

There is also the question of who will be financially responsible.

“We have regularly seen disasters related to fossil fuels, transportation and infrastructure, responsible businesses seem to disappear,” Miran said. “And that leaves local and state taxpayers essentially to foot the bill for billions of dollars of uh to recover and respond to disasters.”

This is a frightening prospect for Meieran. As local and state jurisdictions face increasing disaster-related costs for fossil fuel infrastructure and transportation failures, she says there is no obvious way to pay for it. The goal, Miran says, is to shift the economic burden to the entity responsible for causing the disaster in the first place.

“If we can understand, not only the magnitude and scope of potential damage, but objectively identify costs at the real level, we can look at bond practices where we are likely to require operators in the center to cover the harm risk of their products associated with a natural disaster,” Miran said.

Multnomah County does not have regulatory authority over CEI. So, while Miran agrees to modify the existing infrastructure would be the ideal defense against disaster, the county cannot achieve that.

“Using these mitigating methods is not nearly as costly as looking at the really catastrophic consequences that could occur if we don’t take action,” Miran said. “So we need to address that. We need to define our authority that we act under, and make some of those decisions.”

While many of the reservoirs were built decades ago, new fossil fuel projects are still being proposed in the county. The Portland Office of Development Services is considering whether approval will be given to Zenith Energy to increase the company’s operations in Portland which include transporting crude oil tar sands through the city. But with the recent focus on fossil fuel infrastructure and safety, Miran says the county won’t be on board.

“We have said explicitly that our board is against new fossil fuel infrastructure including trains including other infrastructure, and Peak certainly fits this category,” Miran said.

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