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Residents and experts urge Multnomah County to require financial assurances for CEI Hub fuel facilities
Summary
Multiple public commenters urged the county to adopt risk-bonding or financial-assurance requirements for facilities in the CEI Hub, citing seismic vulnerability, flood risk and recent state legislation (SB 1567) that creates a related compliance framework.
Several public commenters at the Multnomah County Board meeting urged county action to require financial assurances from fuel-storage facilities in the Columbia Edgewater Industrial (CEI) Hub.
Melanie Plaut, a retired physician, told the board the proposed county ordinance would parallel state Senate Bill 1567 and help ensure that companies with large fuel-storage capacity provide funds for recovery after a seismic event. She said many facilities have not yet complied with the state's seismic-evaluation deadlines and described the hub’s aggregate capacity as more than 2,000,000 gallons of liquid fuel. "This ordinance will provide an incentive for the businesses to comply and to comply in a timely fashion with the seismic hardening required by the state," Plaut said.
Catherine Muller, a scientist and longtime Portland resident, said financial-assurance requirements are not unprecedented and should include sizable, retroactive penalties to deter noncompliance; she recommended alternatives to private insurance such as trust funds or surety bonds to ensure funds would be immediately available after an incident. Nancy Heizer, a Linton resident and advocate, described flood and lightning as plausible triggers for catastrophic releases and cited an inflation-adjusted catastrophic-damages estimate of $3,000,000,000.
Speakers asked the board to consider risk bonds that would both incentivize mitigation and make responsible parties pay for cleanup and damages rather than the public. The public comments were framed as appeals to the county to act within its authority; no ordinance text was adopted at the meeting.
County staff and commissioners acknowledged the concerns and discussed alignment with existing state programs, including the DEQ Fuel Tank Seismic Stability Program and SB 1567, but offered no immediate vote on a county ordinance during this session. Staff and commissioners indicated the matter remains under consideration and that the county has worked with advocacy groups over the past year.
The board did not take a formal vote on a county ordinance for the CEI Hub at this meeting; speakers and commissioners asked for continued engagement to translate community requests into actionable policies.
