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Protestors in front of Zenith energy Tuesday morning. Isabella Garcia

• Former state Rep. Mike Nearman pled guilty to official misconduct during the Oregon Capitol insurrection. Nearman allowed armed demonstrators to enter the state capitol in December of last year. Nearman is banned from the Capitol grounds for 18-months, must serve 80 hours of community service, and pay $2,900 in fines.

• I haven’t been able to stop thinking about eating sushi ever since I read Janey Wong’s review of Mitate this morning. You’ve been warned:

The new Mitate food cart's vegan sushi is virtually indistinguishable from its fish-filled counterpart—AND is both fresh tasting and delicious. Our Janey Wong (@janey_san ) has the review.https://t.co/X7z1suEXTu
— Portland Mercury 🗞 (@portlandmercury) July 27, 2021

A protestor outside of the Zenith facility in northwest Portland Tuesday morning. Isabella Garcia

Zenith is seeking approval from the City of Portland to add two more tank unloading platforms to its operation, an expansion that would allow the company to increase its daily oil processing by up to 480,000 gallons. In 2020, Zenith transported more than 200 million gallons of oil.

A group of 16 kayakers launched from the Swan Island boat ramp in north Portland Tuesday morning and paddled over to Zenith’s facility in a show of opposition to the expansion.

Kayakers preparing protest banners to hold on the industrial waterfront. Isabella Garcia

The city blocked the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure in Portland in 2016, but Zenith’s permit is still being considered because the facility applied for the expansion permit before the new city policy was in place. Because of the timing, the City of Portland is required to consider Zenith’s permit under the less restrictive conditions.

The Mercury provides news and fun every single day—but your help is essential. If you believe Portland benefits from smart, local journalism and arts coverage, please consider making a small monthly contribution, because without you, there is no us. Thanks for your support!

DOUG BROWN

Good morning, Portland! Hot, juicy tip: The Mercury's burger week is back this year, and starts in just a couple weeks!

With that important news out of the way, here are the headlines.

• Hmmm... soooo... I guess I shouldn't have burned all my masks last month?

As COVID cases surge, Multnomah County recommends everyone 5 and older wear a mask indoors regardless of vaccination status. The recommendations will not be enforced. https://t.co/J0qnjUGzTf

— Portland Mercury 🗞 (@portlandmercury) July 26, 2021

• And in case you think this is just a Portland thing: President Joe Biden's team is weighing whether they should recommend the re-introduction of mask mandates in some heavily hit parts of the country.

• Meanwhile, new data shows that only 18 percent of Portland Police Bureau officers actually live within city limits. A lot of them live in Washington, supporting my theory that commuting over the I-5 bridge every day turns people into violent, vindictive assholes.

• The headline pretty much says it all here: "Industrial Hub in Northwest Portland Will Cause Catastrophic Oil Spill During Earthquake, Report Finds."

The Mercury provides news and fun every single day—but your help is essential. If you believe Portland benefits from smart, local journalism and arts coverage, please consider making a small monthly contribution, because without you, there is no us. Thanks for your support!

ADA YOKOTA / GETTY IMAGES

In local news:

• Multnomah County is now recommending that all people 5 and older wear masks indoors, regardless of vaccine status. The county, which previously recommended that only unvaccinated people wear masks indoors, announced the new recommendations today in response to a dramatic spike in COVID-19 cases across the state.

• New data obtained by the Mercury shows that as of July 2021, only 18 percent of all sworn officers employed by the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) live inside Portland's city limits. That's 155 of Portland's 828 total officers.

• 🥴:

The industrial hub in Northwest Portland may cause one of the largest oil spills in the world when the Cascadia earthquake hits, a new report from the city and county finds. https://t.co/kfIMH3EE2M
— Portland Mercury 🗞 (@portlandmercury) July 26, 2021

Tanks holding fuel along the Willamette River could become a huge environmental disaster when the Cascadia earthquake hits, according to a new report. AARON LEE

Good morning, Portland! We're entering the last week of July (!!!) on a predictably hot and dry note: Expect highs in the high 80s to low 90s for the rest of the week, and no raindrops in sight. One way to stay cool this week: Take yourself on a date to one of Portland's indie cinemas, and check out their post-COVID updates! Now, the news:

- Portland officials celebrated the city’s “reopening” in downtown Portland this weekend with a free Pink Martini show in Pioneer Courthouse Square and the grand opening of a new food cart pod. It was even enough for some businesses to cautiously remove the boards from their windows. I can’t help but wonder… is Portland still over?

- It’s no surprise that Portland is expecting one of the worst environmental catastrophes in the world when the major Cascadia earthquake hits. But a new report has confirmed this threat, emphasizing on the damage that could be caused by the fuel-holding tanks that sit on the banks of the Willamette River.

- Wildfires continue to rage across the West, including areas of Northern California, Idaho, Washington, Montana, and—of course—Southern Oregon. While officials say that the spread of Oregon’s sprawling Bootleg Fire has slowed, the blazes remain less than half contained.

- After a public callout, Portland beer bar and bottle shop N.W.I.P.A. will be changing its name to North West IPA. For years, the white-owned bar has used a typeface clearly modeled after the all-black 90s hip-hop group N.W.A. After a Black Portlander made a viral TikTok video accusing the bar of appropriating Black culture, it’s getting a makeover.

Early this morning white nationalists defaced a Portland mural depicting the faces of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery. Then over a dozen people showed up today to help the artist restore it. https://t.co/zIbNYdXIAM
— pdx law grrrl (@pdxlawgrrrl) July 26, 2021

Fuel tanks along the Willamette River in Northwest Portland would be vulnerable to breaking or spilling during an earthquake. KATHLEEN MARIE / MERCURY STAFF

The report, commissioned by the City of Portland and Multnomah County, takes inventory of the Critical Energy Infrastructure (CEI) Hub—a group of fuel storage and transfer tanks located along the Willamette River in Northwest Portland—and predicts what would happen to the hub when the Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake, or “the big one,” hits.

The report found that this quake could trigger one of the largest oil spills in history that would destroy the Willamette River’s ecology and nearby residential areas.

“We've known for a long time that the Critical Energy Infrastructure Hub and all the tank farms there pose a really grave threat to the city, the county, the region, the whole state, and environment in an earthquake,” said Portland Bureau of Emergency Management (PBEM) Interim Director Jonna Papaefthimiou. “There’s a desire to take measures to reduce the risk, but it seemed like the first step in any rational action plan was to get more information.”