It isn’t simple – or cheap – to prevent raw sewage and stormwater from spilling into the Willamette River and Columbia Slough.

For decades, rain overwhelmed the city’s sewer system, sending billions of gallons of runoff and human waste into the local waterways. But officials have found solutions, both big and small.

Work on the $1.4 billion Big Pipe containment system – an ambitious public works project that replumbed the city’s built environment – wrapped up in December. But the city of Portland also has committed to investing in smaller, community-driven stormwater management projects, including a recent one in Northeast Portland that also features public art and bicycle parking. City staffers hope the design will be replicated throughout the city when resources allow.

In a brainstorming session approximately five years ago, members of the sustainable stormwater group in the Bureau of Environmental Services came up with the concept, according to Ivy Dunlap, landscape architect for the city.

“We thought it would be cool to somehow integrate a bike rack design with a green street stormwater facility,” she said. “We want to make stormwater more visible and artful, and we also have the goal of integrating stormwater facilities into urban amenities.”

Portland City Council in 2007 approved a “green street”��policy that requires elements such as curb extensions, bio-swales and stormwater planter systems to be part of all city-funded infrastructure projects in the public right-of-way, as required by the city’s stormwater management manual. Projects that don’t fall under stormwater manual requirements pay 1 percent of their construction costs into a “percent for green” fund.

So, although the BES for years has installed different types of green street facilities, the recent project on right-of-way property on Northeast Dekum Street involved a unique collaboration with the Portland Bureau of Transportation, the Regional Arts and Culture Council and several local companies.

Seattle-based artist Buster Simpson and local artist Peg Butler joined the team approximately three years ago to design a sculptural art installation atop the custom bike rack.

“We’re basically inventing a whole new piece of street furniture,” Simpson said.

The aim of the public art component, which the artists call “Dekumstruction,” is to convey a message about the culture of petroleum use and production. Oil barrel halves filled with soil and plants cover the bike rack, which was custom-made by A2 Fabrication.

The installation, which cost approximately $75,000, is outside Breakside Brewery and near several other restaurants and cafes on Dekum Street. An aluminum pipe carries excess water from the brewery’s eco-roof and into the oil barrel planters. From there, water flows to a downspout that delivers it to an upended barrel.

“It’s not an in-your-face message, but it gives you a moment to think about petroleum usage,” Butler said. “We repurposed the oil barrels … they’ve become something else – a protective covering for bikes and also a space for plants to grow.”

The northern and southern ends of the installation also feature planters that collect stormwater. These infiltration areas slow rainwater, which collects oil and other pollutants as it flows across the pavement, allowing the roots of plants to absorb some of the toxins.

Small green street facilities keep stormwater runoff out of sewer pipes, and reduce sewer backups in basements, street flooding and combined sewer overflows to the Willamette River. While the Big Pipe’s enormous capacity has dramatically decreased the occurrence of combined sewage overflows, which lace the river and Columbia Slough with E. coli and other toxins, city staffers say smaller projects are important too.

“We would love to get repeat uses out of the design,” Dunlap said. “The engineering is already done, so if it becomes a city standard, duplicating it will be more cost-effective.”

The Bureau of Environmental Services administered a $50,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as a $15,000 stormwater management grant. The Portland Bureau of Transportation contributed another $10,000 from its capital budget, according to spokesman Dan Anderson.

The bike rack occupies two parking spaces in the lot outside of Breakside Brewery. The exterior of the barrels is painted with an iridescent paint that subtly shifts colors – mirroring the rainbow sheen that appears when oil dripping from a car meets a puddle of rainwater.

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You don’t have to have a sketchy mustache and nasty hair to jump into the Willamette River (see below video). But if you do go in the river, you just may get as dirty. For all you hip folks thinking of jumping into the river on July 31 for , be warned; you may be jumping in a river of excrement.

The city of Portland released this weekend that warned citizens to stay out of the river because rainstorms caused the sewers to overflow into the Willamette. According to the city, such incidents happen roughly 50 times a year. Upon the completion of the , the city claims that sewer overflow incidents would happen a scant four times a year. Though the Department of Environmental Quality says that outside of the incidents, the river is for recreational activities, until I see that the Big Pipe does its job, I’m staying away from the water.

To stay afloat — I mean��abreast — of ��sewer outflow incidents, sign up to the city’s

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July is the heart of summertime. Kids playing under sprinklers, leisurely walks across verdant park lawns and sun tea slowly brewing on the windowsill. It also marks the beginning of the city’s new fiscal year and rate increases to pay for all that care-free summertime fun. What, you think fun is free?

The Portland Bureau of Environmental Services�� today that residential monthly bills for sewer and storm water services increased 6 percent, the latest rate increase to pay for maintenance of the system and capital improvements such as (combined sewer outflow) and the�� to meet EPA standards on municipal water quality.

To view a complete 2011-2012 rates, click��

And here’s a video:

– Peter Beland

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Five years of construction on the East Side Big Pipe project are on track to come to an end this September. According to Debbie Caselton, a community relations representative with the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services, “final hookup” work will be completed this summer.

The $464 million eastside Big Pipe project aims to divert overflow into the Willamette River by creating a six-mile long, 22-foot diameter combined storm water and sewer overflow tunnel on the east side of the river from Southeast 17^th Avenue and McLoughlin Boulevard to Swan Island.

Tunneling began in 2007 and finished last October. Currently, crews are building or restoring seven shafts that will connect overflows to the tunnel. They are also installing bubbler tubes that will measure the water level in the tunnel. This summer, overflows will be connected to the tunnels, which will require above-ground work and the closing of some intersections for up to a month and a half, Caselton said.

The contractor for the big pipe project is joint venture Kiewit-Bilfinger Berger.

When the project is finished, BES estimates that the volume of sewage and storm water that now overflows to the river when it rains will be reduced by more than 94 percent.

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Carol Bolstad isn’t surprised when a construction project finishes late. But because so many projects follow unrealistic schedules – about 80 percent, in Bolstad’s estimation – she is surprised that any more than 20 percent finish on time.

Bolstad, president of Stevenson, Wash.,-based Scheduling and Information Services Inc., or SIS, gets called in to make schedules for huge projects, or to sort things out when huge messes get made of projects. “When everyone’s pointing fingers, that’s when you get involved and get them back on track,” Bolstad said. “You get them finished.”

Contractors often fall behind because their construction schedules are little more than wishful thinking, Bolstad said. Tasks that must be completed in order often aren’t scheduled in order, causing unnecessary delays.

On one project in California, Bolstad could tell that the project would be late just by looking at its inaccurate schedule. “When you go into the field and start walking around, you get the same sense,” she said. Sure enough, the project is now more than six months behind schedule.

If companies wait to call SIS until the project is behind schedule and over budget, there’s only so much the company can do, said Tony Bolstad, project controls manager. SIS can present more options if it has more time.

“We can suggest rearranging activities to run things concurrently,” Tony Bolstad said. “You can increase the crew size, put out people on weekends, or bring in a whole second crew.
“A lot of times, they’re not staffed appropriately and they don’t even realize it.”

On very large, or long, projects, companies often recognize the importance of having accurate schedules before construction starts. Jim McDonald, project manager for Impregilo/Healy, hired SIS to schedule Portland’s West Side Big Pipe project. The joint venture also employed SIS to build a baseline schedule for the Las Vegas water intake project under construction at Lake Mead.

“We usually do that scheduling in-house,” McDonald said, “but the initial development of a (schedule) for a big project is a pretty time-intensive endeavor.”

Figuring out the scheduling system and training employees can sometimes be more trouble than using an outside contractor, McDonald said. “It’s very complicated software,” he said. “And good people are hard to find.”

“It’s a very small little niche,” Carol Bolstad said. “And there was a really big need.”

Small companies don’t have the money for the software, she said. And just because a company can afford the software, doesn’t mean the company can run it.

“If you don’t do it every single day, you don’t do it well,” she said.

SIS does use the software every day, on project sites as spread out as Iraq, Hawaii and Alaska. The 10-person company has seven to eight employees who travel to larger project sites.

As larger projects go, Portland’s Big Pipe is pretty big, but it’s no Panama Canal. Bolstad knows – she’s building a schedule for that project too.

Last month, the Panama Canal Authority’s administrator announced that a group of contractors including Impregilo would build the new set of locks for the canal. The construction cost estimate is $3.19 billion out of a total project cost of around $5.25 billion. Impregilo again turned to SIS.

That project will probably require two or three full-time schedulers, Bolstad said – at least one for each side of the locks. They’ll live in Panama for the four-year duration of the project.

Bolstad herself will stay in the Columbia River Gorge, which has proved to be as good a base as any for the far-flung jobs SIS has taken during its five-year existence. “We started in Stevenson, and we’re still here,” she said.

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