The American Council of Engineering Companies earlier this month gave its top award — the Grand Conceptor — to McMillen, a full-service firm based in Boise, Idaho, for its work on the Klamath River Renewal Project during the annual Engineering Excellence Awards gala in Washington, D.C. The project was an ACEC Oregon Grand Award winner earlier this year.

The world’s largest dam removal project resulted in successful restoration of more than 400 miles of habitat along the Klamath River; salmon returned to tributaries inaccessible for over a century. Four hydroelectric dams — JC Boyle, Copco No. 1, Copco No. 2, and Iron Gate — had blocked the former third-largest salmon-producing river system on the West Coast. The $504 million project was completed on time and within budget.

Within months of the final dam being removed, Chinook, Coho and Pacific Lamprey began returning in numbers not seen for generations. On Sept. 24, 2025, a Chinook salmon passed through the fish ladder at Keno Dam in southern Oregon, marking the farthest upstream salmon had reached since the dams were constructed, according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The project’s complexity required coordination between two states, multiple tribes, federal agencies, and numerous conservation and fishing organizations. McMillen served as owner’s representative for Klamath River Renewal Corp., the nonprofit created specifically to execute the project. The Yurok, Karuk, Hoopa, Shasta, Klamath and Modoc tribes led the effort. Kiewit was the general contractor.

McMillen, in its ACEC Oregon award submission, noted that one significant challenge involved managing 5 million cubic yards of sediment. Engineers used advanced hydraulic modeling to optimize river bypass systems at each dam and developed mechanical assistance measures to enhance sediment movement downstream. The team analyzed potential effects on the estuary and Crescent City Harbor to balance environmental protection with regulatory compliance.

McMillen’s risk analysis also led to revised dam removal sequencing. Initially, two dams were scheduled for concurrent removal, but engineers recommended removing one dam during the pre-drawdown period and the second during reservoir drawdown, reducing complexity and minimizing risk.

Judging for the ACEC awards program took place in February and was conducted by a national panel of 32 built environment leaders, along with experts from government, media, and academia. Award criteria focused on uniqueness and originality, technical innovation, social and economic value, and excitement generated toward the engineering profession.

Founded in 1906, ACEC represents more than 5,500 independent engineering firms and more than 650,000 professionals in 51 state and regional organizations.

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The proposed Hood River-White Salmon Interstate Bridge replacement project has received federal approval to advance to final design and construction permitting.

The $1.12 billion Columbia River bridge project spanning Oregon and Washington received a record of decision on Tuesday from the Federal Highway Administration, closing out National Environmental Policy Act obligations.

“What it means is that we have finalized the NEPA process and the project can move forward into final design right away and construction,” Michael Shannon, bridge replacement project director, said in an interview on Wednesday.

Kiewit Corp., the project’s design-build contractor, is on track to hit the 60 percent design level next summer, with a final set of construction plans expected to be ready in spring 2027, Shannon said.

If anticipated funding falls into place, construction would follow in October 2027, Shannon said.

“That is dependent on securing the final federal funding for the project,” he said.

The project team is awaiting a decision on Bridge Investment Program funds. Project officials have requested $530 million from the program, which is administered by the Federal Highway Administration.

The total price tag includes planning and construction and encompasses about $180 million in contingency funding, Shannon said.

This bridge replacement project appears to be moving smoothly toward construction while other major infrastructure plans have been stymied by delayed or canceled funding.

As part of major legislation, President Donald Trump earlier this year rescinded $412.5 million for the Interstate 5 Rose Quarter Improvement Project. Other projects across the nation have likewise not received expected funding.

Shannon said he had no concerns about the Trump administration’s willingness to fund the Hood River–White Salmon Interstate Bridge replacement.

“We got notification that we met the screening criteria for projects under the new administration,” he said.

The project was “highly recommended,” Shannon said. “The project (team) has done everything it can to be positioned to accept award,” he added.

The Hood River-White Salmon Interstate Bridge proposal meets a key threshold, Shannon said: Requested federal funding is less than 50 percent of the project’s total cost. Oregon and Washington have each agreed to chip in $125 million.

The new bridge would replace the existing span, which opened in December 1924. The new bridge would sit slightly west of the current bridge and include two 12-foot vehicle lanes, two 8-foot shoulders and a 12-foot shared-use path for bicycles and pedestrians. Vehicles would be tolled.

The proposed bridge’s 90-foot vertical clearance has been preliminarily approved by the U.S. Coast Guard.

The replacement bridge “would meet current design standards to be seismically sound under a 1,000-year seismic event and operational under a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake,” the record of decision states.

Indeed, seismic concerns were a driving force behind the project. The current bridge sits on a sandy, silty layer that is vulnerable to liquefaction.

“It is more susceptible to earthquake than we had thought before,” Shannon said.

The bridge project exemplifies the public-sector work that has buoyed the construction industry while interest rates remain high, private lenders exercise caution, and some types of commercial real estate suffer from oversupply and high vacancy rates.

“Infrastructure funding has been a major source of stability for the construction industry over the past few years,” Macrina Wilkins, a researcher for the Associated General Contractors of America, wrote in an email on Wednesday. “Bridge, highway and other projects supported by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (and related federal programs) have kept contractors busy and work flowing into the pipeline, even as concerns about labor shortages and economic uncertainty persisted.”

Contractors are “eager to undertake” projects like the Hood River–White Salmon Interstate Bridge replacement “especially in the face of softer private demand,” Wilkins added.

Still, Wilkins stated, contractors should prepare for a leveling off in public infrastructure work: Highway and street spending fell 0.9 percent nationally in August, compared to a year earlier.

“Infrastructure investments are still supporting the industry, just not at the unusually elevated pace we saw earlier in the (Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act) rollout,” Wilkins wrote.

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Construction of the $2.1 billion Bull Run water infrastructure project can resume after a Multnomah County hearings officer gave the go-ahead, the Portland Water Bureau announced.

“As of Monday, we’re going to start doing minor work to prepare the site, and we anticipate to be in full swing within a month,” Water Bureau spokesman Brandon Zero said Thursday.

Construction of the megaproject has been halted since February, after the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals ruled that another hearings officer had not adequately considered community natural resources in approving the project’s conditional use.

Hearings officer Liz Fancher ruled Monday with approval of the project’s conditional use exception.

“This decision allows us to move forward to protect public health, and to provide resilience to wildfires, landslides, flooding and other natural disasters,” Mayor Keith Wilson stated in a news release on Wednesday. “The city is eager to put hundreds of construction tradespeople back to work to complete these critical water system improvements.”

A joint venture of MWH Constructors and Kiewit Corp. is building the project.

The project, which comprises a water filtration plant near the Clackamas County line and a network of pipelines, has faced opposition from a neighborhood group, the Cottrell Community Planning Organization.

The project team is working to meet a Sept. 30, 2027, deadline to deliver filtered water to the Water Bureau’s approximately 1 million customers in the Portland-metro area. The deadline was imposed on the Water Bureau by the Oregon Health Authority after cryptosporidium was repeatedly found in drinking water.

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The Portland Water Bureau recently obtained the largest Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) loan ever from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The $727 million, low-interest loan is expected to cover at least half of the cost of the Bull Run Filtration Project, which consists of three infrastructure improvements that are intended to provide the Portland area with clean water and a seismically resilient supply system by 2027.

“You’re going to be improving the environment; you’re doing to be reducing lead and increasing drinking water quality for over 1 million residents while adding over 4,000 jobs,” Radhika Fox, the EPA’s acting assistant administrator for water, stated during a virtual press conference. “It is everything we want to see in our communities.”

The first of the three projects will produce a new corrosion control facility at the existing Lusted Hill water treatment facility east of Gresham. Ground was broken on this in fall 2020. Highlights include construction of a new building to contain the corrosion control treatment system, a water utility water pump station, and associated piping and support systems. Work is being carried out by Colorado-based general contractor MWH Constructors and expected to be complete by April 2022, ahead of a federal regulatory deadline.

The primary purpose of this project, said Michelle Cheek, the deputy program director for the Bull Run Filtration Project and an engineering supervisor for the Water Bureau, is to make low-alkaline Bull Run water less corrosive to the copper and lead solder pipes found in some home and building plumbing – primarily systems constructed between 1970 and 1985.

The new facility will treat water to raise its alkalinity and help it meet new regulatory standards.

“The existing facility is a chemical feed facility, where they add caustic soda and chemicals to treat the water,” Cheek said. “(The caustic soda system) will be decommissioned once the new facilities are constructed. It’s a pretty process-mechanical focused project.”

The second, larger project will be construction of a new water filtration facility on city-owned property half of a mile south of the Lusted Hill one. When the new facility is brought online, it will mark the end of unfiltered water for Portland water customers.

“We will consolidate all of our treatment facilities here,” said David Peters, the program director for the Bull Run Filtration Project. “The disinfection we do in the watershed with chlorine will move to this site.”

Granular media filtration will be used to remove cryptosporidium and other contaminants, and the new treatment plant will be able to filter up to 145 million gallons of water per day. Planning began in 2017 as part of the regulatory compliance schedule and is now nearly complete. Design work is set to finish in late 2022, with construction scheduled to wrap up by 2027.

“Normally a utility would have done a number of years of planning,” Peters said. “But we had to consolidate that into our compliance schedule because we did not have a plan to do this.”

Some of the firms involved include Brown and Caldwell (program management), and Stantec and Carollo Engineers (predesign and finalization of details for the design). The joint venture of MWH Constructors and Kiewit will serve as construction manager/general contractor.

Finally, the third project will be installation of pipelines for water from the new filtration facility and corrosion control facility. Jacobs of California will design the pipelines. The Water Bureau is likely to issue in April a request for proposals for a CM/GC to handle the project, Peters said.

“We hope to have them on board by the end of the year,” he said.

The new filtration facility and the pipelines will be designed to modern seismic standards and become key components of a system designed to function even after events such as earthquakes, wildfires or storms add contaminants to water.

The Bull Run Treatment Project will generate an estimated 4,700 to 7,500 jobs, with 28 percent of journeyman work hours and 31 percent of apprentice work hours going to minorities and women in the skilled trades. The projects will deliver an estimated $200 million in contracts to disadvantaged, minority-owned, woman-owned, service-disabled-veteran-owned, and emerging small businesses.

The interest rate for the WIFIA loan will be just 1.89 percent. The loan will save the city an estimated $247.5 million in comparison to typical market financing. A combination of revenue bonds and Portland Water Bureau system funds also will be used to pay for the project.

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