In Portland Tribune, OPINION: Earthquake, Portland’s energy-storage hub, could lead to massive disaster

[The following was published in Portland Tribune on October 28, 2024]

A magnitude 5.0 earthquake just hit off Oregon’s coast, but we’re expecting a much bigger one in our region, which makes Northwest Portland’s Critical Energy Infrastructure (CEI) Hub a ticking time bomb. Most candidates for local office in and around Portland say we need to defuse it.

The CEI Hub holds 90% of Oregon’s liquid fuel, including highly volatile and flammable substances. Built on in-filled soil next to the Willamette River, the facility is vulnerable to earthquakes from the Cascadia Subduction Zone, and as a New Yorker article pointed out, the area is overdue for “the really big one.” Over the next 50 years, there’s a roughly 30% chance of a magnitude 8.0 quake or above, and a 10% chance of 9.0 or above.

A major quake could liquefy soil under the CEI Hub and unleash the largest oil spill in U.S. history, potentially killing tens of thousands, destroying most of the state’s fuel supply, constraining access to fuel for first responders. A 2020 Multnomah County Office of Sustainability seismic risk analysis found the CEI Hub could spill more than 190 million gallons of explosive and flammable liquids into the Willamette River, decimating ecosystems and public health, costing $2.6 billion or more. The likely resulting conflagration would release toxic chemicals into the air. Forest Park could go up in flames. With one road in and out of the CEI Hub, first responders likely couldn’t get to the inferno, leaving residents to fend for themselves.

These are glaring risks, with damage and costs too great to contemplate, for which fossil fuel companies operating at the CEI Hub currently bear no responsibility. They reap record-breaking profits while externalizing the risks. If disaster strikes, they could declare bankruptcy, leaving taxpayers to shoulder cleanup, remediation, and restoration costs.

There’s growing consensus in Portland that this must change. Companies could be required to post fossil fuel risk bonds, which would hold them financially responsible for potential accidents including those caused by quakes, floods, lightning, railcar wrecks, equipment failures, and/or human error. Instead of leaving taxpayers to pay for disasters they didn’t create, fossil fuel risk bonds would establish a “polluter pays” principle.

Many Portlanders embrace this idea. A recent survey conducted by my organization, the Oregon-based nonprofit This Land, found broad support for risk bonding. It polled incumbents and candidates for the Portland City Council, mayor and Multnomah County Commission. In all, 94% of respondents said they consider CEI a hazard to the community; 97% support fossil fuel risk bonding to mitigate its risks; 91% agreed that city and county ordinances opposing new fossil fuel infrastructure should remain in place; 93% pledged to revisit the controversial Land Use Compatibility Statement for Zenith Energy, a fossil fuel company that managed to expand despite Portland’s ban on new fossil fuel infrastructure; and 90% pledged to take no funds from the fossil fuel industry.

Each individual’s survey responses are posted here. Eleven of the 19 mayoral candidates didn’t respond after repeated contacts. A few candidates opposed fossil fuel risk bonding and/or refused to commit to take no funds from the fossil fuel industry.

With mail-in ballots already in people’s homes, this is important information for voters to have. Risk bonding would ensure polluters, not the public, bear the costs of the risks they create. It would also give companies an incentive to invest in hardening facilities against those risks, and/or decommissioning the ones that can’t be hardened. Conversely, not adopting risk bonding gives companies a perverse incentive to continue to do nothing.

It’s time to demand that companies profiting from the CEI Hub take responsibility for its risks, and that elected officials hold them accountable — now, before “the really big one” hits.

Daphne Wysham is the executive director of the nonprofit This Land, and a fellow at the Center for Sustainable Economy, where she and economist John Talberth pioneered fossil fuel risk bonds.

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