Oregon Legislature clears bill to plan for fuel tank safety

The bill would require owners to assess how vulnerable the storage tanks would be to a major earthquake off the Oregon coast — the most recent quake of that magnitude was Jan. 26, 1700, and occur at roughly 230-year intervals — and what can be done to reduce the risks. Those plans are due to the Department of Environmental Quality by June 1, 2024. DEQ, through the Environmental Quality Commission, will come up with rules and a timeline to put the safety measures into effect. The bill also would require the Department of Energy to come up with a security plan to prepare for an earthquake, protect communities and align with Oregon’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gases by 90% by 2050.

“It is the first step in a long overdue set of actions needed to prepare this state for an inevitable catastrophe we know is coming our way,” said Rep. Dacia Grayber, D-Tigard, a firefighter with Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue. “

Study prompted bill

Sen. Michael Dembrow, D-Portland, introduced the bill after a study commissioned by Multnomah County and the city of Portland concluded that a spillage from Oregon’s largest concentration of fuel storage tanks could result in a ecological disaster on par with the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. The riverside area holds about 90% of Oregon’s gasoline and diesel before the fuel is distributed statewide, and all of the jet fuel used at Portland International Airport.

Many of those tanks were built long before current seismic standards took effect. They sit on unstable river fill that is likely to give way in a severe earthquake in a process called liquefaction.

“We’re 100 years overdue for a major Cascadia subduction zone earthquake,” Dembrow said. “Any spill or explosion at the CEI Hub would be a serious threat to workers, firefighters and other first responders, frontline communities, fish, and other natural resources. It has been characterized as a disaster on the order of Fukushima and Deepwater Horizon combined.”