On Saturday, only twisted rubble was left of the tanks of the former tank farm in Millersburg.
A bike ride Saturday took me to the corner of Conser and Old Salem roads in Millersburg, where the Kinder Morgan pipeline company owns a pumping station and a former tank farm that stored petroleum products years ago. Now the tanks are gone.
The 15 above-ground tanks apparently had been decommissioned by the time Houston-based Kinder Morgan bought the property from Southern Pacific Pipelines in 1997.
Over years since then, council members in Millersburg had wanted the useless tanks to go away. And then, in 2022, the council enacted an ordinance requiring that abandoned above-ground tanks must be removed within one year.
As I reported last fall, city and pipeline company representatives met in September 2023, and the company said it would have the tanks demolished by the end of the year.
It took a little longer, though. The city manager, Kevin Kreitman, told the council this February that the contractor on the job, Pacific Recycling, had found water in some of the tanks, which evidently created a complication.
But now, as I saw Saturday, not much is left of the tanks except rusted and twisted metal waiting to be cleared away. Presumably there’s still a jumble of underground pipes.
The property is on the northeast corner of Conser Road and Old Salem Road. As I understand it, Kinder Morgan operates a pump station there on its pipeline, which transports petroleum products from Portland 115 miles down the valley to Eugene.
Whether the land occupied by the tanks can ever be used for something else is unclear. Millersburg has zoned the property “general commercial,” which allows a wide variety of uses from retail and offices to gas stations and lumber yards.
The underground fuel pipeline, by the way, dates from 1962. It crosses the freeway and then cuts through the Albany subdivisions east of I-5 on its way south.
Maps available online are vague about the pipeline’s exact location. But on the ground, you can try to locate it by following the signs that warn people that it’s there. (hh)
I leaned the bike against the closed gate of the former tank farm Saturday.
The sign off Old Salem Road marks the pipeline’s location near the former tank farm.
I grew up with oil tanks at my dads Richfield oil bulk plant was sad when they took them out after my dad sold the plant .
My Dad used to work for Duane and hauled fuel from the bulk plant you are talking about.