Water: No clear answer

City might need to build another buried reservoir at Powell Butte

By Jim Redden

The Portland Tribune, Jun 19, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (9 Reader comments)

L.E. BASKOW / TRIBUNE PHOTO

Top: Water bureau manager Chris Wanner (left) and director David Shaff walk at Powell Butte above an underground 50-million-gallon water reservoir (above). The city of Portland is considering building a second reservoir there. Water makes its way from the Bull Run watershed to the reservoir and then to city taps.

At city Commissioner Randy Leonard’s direction, the Portland Water Bureau is drawing up plans to comply with the newest federal clean-water rules.

Unless the bureau can circumvent the rules, the plans could require the city to spend millions of dollars on a new water treatment plant, possibly located at the base of the large reservoir in the Bull Run watershed where Portland gets most of its drinking water.

The bureau also is studying building a second underground 50-million-gallon reservoir at the Powell Butte Nature Park, where one such reservoir already is located.

All water customers would see their bills increase to pay for the projects, which together could easily cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Leonard still is hopeful that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or Congress ultimately will grant Portland a waiver from the rules. One rule targets a potentially deadly microscopic parasite, called cryptosporidium, that never has been found in Bull Run water.

Another prohibits open storage reservoirs, which exist in both Mount Tabor and Washington parks. As a result, Leonard said planning has to start now in case the city must comply with both requirements.

“We are going to be prepared to comply with the rules if we need to,” Leonard said. “The city is not going to violate clean-water rules.”

A new Powell Butte reservoir could have an additional benefit, Leonard said. It would allow the bureau to disconnect the aging open storage reservoirs from the water-distribution system and preserve some or all of them as historical properties.

“That way we never have to bury them,” Leonard said, referring to a controversial plan approved by the City Council several years ago and abandoned in the face of public opposition.

Some of those opponents do not support the bureau’s planning efforts, however. They believe it means Leonard has all but given up on fighting the new rules, which were adopted by the EPA in 2006.

“The costs are tremendous, and we don’t need to do it,” said Floy Jones, a founding member of Friends of the Reservoirs, a grassroots group that successfully challenged the burial plans.

In addition to her concerns over costs, Jones worries the city would have to tear up Mount Tabor and Washington parks to disconnect the reservoirs in them.

The situation is aggravated by Leonard’s decision to not recommend reappointing one of the water bureau’s most outspoken critics to the Portland Utility Review Board, a citizen committee that reviews and comments on issues that affect water, sewer and garbage rates.

Scott Fernandez is a microbiologist who repeatedly has questioned the need to apply the new EPA rules to Portland’s water system because of the lack of provable cryptosporidium contamination.

His term ended May 31. Although Fernandez is legally allowed to serve one more year, Leonard is looking for someone to replace him.

“They are trying to shut me up,” Fernandez said.

Leonard admits he is intentionally dropping Fernandez from the review board, but denies it is an effort to silence him. Instead, Leonard says Fernandez is a disruptive presence on the board who frequently bullies both city employees and other board members.

“I’m not willing to subject city employees and other PURB members to that kind of behavior,” Leonard said.

Fernandez admits he is aggressive, but says he is working hard to protect public safety and the ratepayers. He believes building a new treatment plant and underground reservoir is a waste of money.

History of controversy

Leonard became water commissioner shortly after the end of the heated fight over the reservoir burial plan. Although the water bureau long had considered capping or burying the open reservoirs in Mount Tabor and Washington parks, the City Council unexpectedly approved the plans in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Citing safety concerns, the council approved the plans in a directive in the bureau’s budget without a separate public hearing in April 2002.

When neighbors living around Mount Tabor learned about the plan a few months later, many banded together to oppose it. Jones and other activists argued that the safety threat was overstated and burying the reservoirs would destroy the beauty and historic character of the open reservoirs.

After more than two years of escalating controversy, the council finally backed down and canceled the project.

In the days after being appointed to oversee the bureau, Leonard reached out to Jones and other activists to heal the wounds. He sent e-mails to many of the leaders apologizing that the city had ignored them in the past and promising to set up a series of meetings with them and bureau managers to discuss their issues.

“When the city ignores citizens, it drives them crazy. I intend to listen to what they have to say,” Leonard told the Portland Tribune at the time.

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