Douglas
Not only is power a problem for the west coasts expanding population but as some may have mentioned on this thread before water may follow energy as the next crisis. Lots of stories in todays paper on water as well:
Portland sweats as 'burbs shop for water
The city bureau needs revenue from suburban customers to keep up its system and build more facilities
Sunday, December 31, 2000
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By Scott Learn of The Oregonian staff
With most of the westside suburbs turning up their noses at drinking from the Willamette River, the thinking was that the city of Portland, supplier of hallowed Bull Run reservoir water to 840,000 city and suburban customers, would be sitting pretty.
That thinking may be all wet.
Recently, three of Portland's biggest suburban buyers have stuck their toes into the Clackamas River. So Portland officials, concerned about losing needed customers, have called in leaders from at least one of those agencies, the Rockwood Public Utility District, for a talking-to. They want to know more about its plans to connect with the competition. Portland Commissioner Erik Sten, who oversees the city's Water Bureau, says the move reflects a regional water system in chaos.
Rockwood, which serves 50,000 customers east of Interstate 205, was not swayed. It plans to begin drawing up to half its water from the Clackamas by next year. The neighboring Powell Valley Water District and Tigard on the westside are talking up the Clackamas, too. Gresham is considering climbing aboard.
"I think some of the staff down at the Water Bureau are a bit upset with us," said Harvey Barnes, Rockwood's manager. "But for us it's pretty simple. We want to be able to shut off the Bull Run when it's dirty (with mud from winter storms). And we want to get prices down, because Portland is pretty expensive."
The potential defections couldn't come at a tougher time for Portland, which is negotiating new long-term contracts -- perhaps "in perpetuity" -- with its six largest suburban customers. The outcome will help set water rates in Portland and in some of the region's fastest growing suburbs: Gresham, Tualatin, Tigard and the sprawling Tualatin Valley Water District on the westside.
As the negotiations continue, Portland, admiral of the region's waters for more than a century, finds itself caught between two realities.
Reality No. 1: Population growth, mostly in the suburbs, new demands to release water for threatened fish and relatively high suburban use in the summer have pushed the Bull Run's two reservoirs to their summertime limit and erased water-use reductions achieved after the 1992 drought.
That squeeze has forced routine summer use of the city's politically unpopular well fields, threatened off and on by solvent contamination. The growth also pressures the city to play the heavy in contract negotiations by asking suburban users to boost conservation and pick up a larger share of new storage projects.
Reality No. 2: The city needs all the customers it can get to keep rates low and to spread the costs -- at least $220 million for the next 20 years -- of capital projects that have no ties to population growth, suburban or otherwise.
Muddy water in winter
But with the Bull Run reservoirs shut down three times since 1996 because of winter storms and muddy water, suburban customers aren't as eager to sign up for Portland's largely untreated supply.
Sten thinks a combination of aggressive conservation, a $150 million treatment plant and a third Bull Run dam when needed are what it would take to eliminate all but emergency use of the well fields and supply the region with tops-in-the-nation water.
But the treatment plant and a third dam -- environmentally questionable and carrying a $185 million price tag -- can't be bankrolled by city customers alone.
At this point, Sten and Barnes said, the balance of power between the city and its suburban customers is about even.
"Portland has the upper hand in the Bull Run system," Barnes said. "They own it. They get to make the rules. But I don't think anybody has an upper hand overall."
Customers essential
This may shock urban sophisticates, but the fact is the city, under tremendous political pressure from businesses and senior citizens over soaring sewer rates, can't keep water rates in line without suburban customers.
If the city stopped shipping 40 percent of its water wholesale to 19 suburban water agencies, it would have enough water from the Bull Run reservoirs near Mount Hood to supply city customers into the foreseeable future.
But city customers would see their bills jump by as much as 25 percent, because most of the bureau's costs -- from paying off debt for capital projects to maintaining hundreds of miles of in-town pipelines -- wouldn't go away.
The city's latest building plan calls for spending at least $317 million on projects in the next 20 years. It is expected to push up city rates at least a third by 2010.
Most of those projects -- from capping open Portland reservoirs vulnerable to sabotage to treating Bull Run supplies against cryptosporidium, a parasite that killed more than 100 people and sickened 400,000 in Milwaukee, Wis., in 1993 -- can't be pinned on suburban growth.
In fact, bureau forecasts show that the more suburban customers the bureau has to cover those projects, the less city residents will pay. With those economics in mind, Sten wants the city to cover the growth of its existing customers, sell more water to Tigard and add fast-growing Sherwood to its customer list.
But the suburban customers may not go along.
Voters in Tigard, Tualatin and Sherwood voted against using water from the Willamette early last year. But Tigard recently inked a deal to explore an alliance with the South Fork Water Board that would require expanding the agency's treatment plant on the Clackamas from 20 million gallons a day to as much as 60 million gallons.
Tualatin Valley goes to river
Tualatin Valley has plans to chip $18.5 million into a Willamette River treatment plant as well as expand its supply from the Trask and Tualatin rivers. Wilsonville, whose voters approved tapping the Willamette last year, is building the $49 million plant.
On the east side, Rockwood plans to build a 9-mile pipeline connecting with a Clackamas River Water District treatment plant, which has 14 million gallons a day of excess capacity. Powell Valley, which sits next to Rockwood, plans to tap into that water, too. Gresham may be interested.
Suburban customers are clearly wary of the Willamette, bordered by industry and agriculture. But Barnes, of Rockwood, said he did not get a single complaint about the district's plans to shift up to half its use to the Clackamas.
"Portland probably needs to wake up and start doing business in today's terms," Barnes said. "I doubt a high percentage of people in the Portland metropolitan area get up in the morning and wonder where the water comes from."
It's unclear how much the Clackamas can end up supplying. It has many of the same endangered fish issues as Bull Run has.
But water managers say it makes good sense to diversify anyway, given the Bull Run's potential for shutdowns. Suburban customers agree: In a 1996 survey of Tualatin Valley's customers, 70 percent supported exploring water sources beyond the Bull Run.
Where the suburbs see common-sense planning, Sten sees "gridlock, hand-wringing and speculation of the worst kind."
"If we have a fractured system, it's possible anyone can make a self-serving deal that won't help the region," Sten said. "Somehow we have to get 27 different water providers in the region to agree to do something. It's chaos now."
Suburban water managers don't disagree entirely with Sten's assessment: When Portland conducted workshops for its latest capital plan, most of the area's water managers said they would support a regional water authority that could be more objective and decisive.
"We've got to get away from this turf issue and look at what the region needs for a water supply," said Greg DiLoreto, general manager of the Tualatin Valley district. "It's regional now. It's not us individually any more." |
