Our rivers impact and are impacted by every decision we make. We need to recognize that everything is connected and start treating the City as an ecosystem where each component very directly affects every other component. We have to look at the whole beast.
fun fact: I composed, produced, and played all the instruments on the music for this video.
Ross Island
A priority for me is going to be a bias for action and outcomes, not always process and not always consensus. We have a solution to the Ross Island algae bloom right now. Who is taking the lead on that? I will.
We must complete the design and permitting for flushing channels to address the Ross Island algae bloom as one of our first actions.
Engineers have developed a channel-flushing solution to restore circulation in the lagoon and address the toxic algae blooms that spread into the Willamette, but the project still needs final engineering and permitting, and has been stalled between City, County, State, and Federal finger-pointing and buck-passing. Funding that defined step would transform an existing technical solution into a construction-ready project capable of attracting the much larger public and private investment required to build it. The current estimate is $688,000.
“Fund this entire solution” is often an impossible request. “Fund the step that unlocks the next $14 million” is a leverage proposition.
The CEI Hub
Connecting permitted capacity to demand needs to be addressed.
At the CEI Hub, Portland should connect permitted fuel-storage capacity to measured regional demand, and establish a timetable for reducing storage as demand declines. The city should also publish a transition plan for the land rather than allowing fragmented ownership and authority to prevent action on one of Oregon’s greatest environmental and seismic dangers. If the required demand updates in 2028 and 2031 show that our estimates were off, and so we need less storage, we should require a larger reduction, and require part of the 20% reduction happen earlier than 2036 if those demand numbers support it. I don’t *think* that is part of the current plan. I think everything is static. The plan should be more dynamic.
I also don’t think that there is a plan for the future of the terminals. We should start planning and negotiating now for what those facilities, and the land, could become. Housing, restored riverfront, should we revisit the Linnton waterfront initiative from a few years back.
To sum it all up: adjust the storage capacity to decline faster when demand declines faster than the baseline estimates, and start now in thinking about a safe and useful future for the riverfront and Linnton.
Access to the Rivers
Our rivers and our parks are a connected system. A waterfront park that offers a view of a river people can’t even go in – well, that’s just crazy.
