As you may have heard, despite years of public outcry against Zenith Energy’s dangerous operations in our community, earlier this week the City of Portland quietly approved a Land Use Compatibility Statement (LUCS) for Zenith—giving the company the green light for five more years of oil trains.

This is truly despicable, and a huge slap in the face to the thousands of community members (all of us!) who oppose these threats to our community and our planet, and who’ve been working hard for years to hold Zenith accountable. Here is more bad news: Zenith is located in the Critical Energy Infrastructure (CEI) Hub, a six-mile stretch of old tank farms, located in NW Portland along the Willamette River. The CEI Hub holds more than 90% of all liquid fuel in Oregon, and is on what is known as a liquefaction zone—meaning in the likely case of an eventual earthquake, the soil will become the consistency of cake batter. The result of this would be catastrophic for our communities, the ecosystem, and the Lower Columbia River.

We are organizing to make sure that doesn’t happen and we need you. That’s why we’re writing to invite you to an exciting event next week: Rumble on the River: What’s Up with Zenith Energy and the Critical Energy Infrastructure Hub in Portland, the first in a series of community-driven forums to educate and activate around the threats to public health, safety, and our environment.