Portland officials on Thursday said the city will request a two-year extension to complete the massive Bull Run Filtration Project.

Meanwhile, the project’s estimated cost has risen sharply. The water filtration and distribution project is now expected to cost $2.56 billion — a $450 million increase.

City officials blamed increased costs on an extensive land use process that included the response to an appeal made to the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals.

“We are doing everything we can to expedite the delivery of this crucial investment in Portland‘s economic viability and the public health and safety of our people,” Mayor Keith Wilson stated in a news release.

on Wednesday that the project could proceed despite objections from the Cottrell Community Planning Organization, which was joined by the Multnomah County Rural Fire Protection District No. 10 and 1000 Friends of Oregon in challenging the infrastructure project.

City officials were forced to halt construction on the project in February 2025 as the land use appeal played out.

The Portland Water Bureau is on the hook to meet a September 2027 deadline to deliver filtered water to the utility’s nearly 1 million customers. The city reached an agreement with the Oregon Health Authority to provide filtered water after the parasite cryptosporidium was repeatedly detected in the city’s water supply.

The seismically resilient and weather-resistant filtration plant will provide safe and consistent water following a major earthquake, landslide, wildfire or major storm, Wilson stated.

The project is being built by a joint venture of water-plant specialist MWH Constructors and construction giant Kiewit Corp. in a rural area of east Multnomah County near the Clackamas County line. The joint venture broke ground on the site in June 2024.

The post Bull Run construction delays, $450M cost increase expected appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

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.

The post Bull Run water project gets green light to resume appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

As the COVID-19 pandemic reached the Portland-metro area, a massive shortfall of personal protective equipment (PPE) for health care professionals quickly became evident.

With hospitals, clinics and first responders geared up for day-to-day operations, stocks of crucial equipment such as N95 respirators and filters, latex gloves, gowns and face shields were already low. Then a sudden and massive increase in PPE usage in health care settings led administrators to scramble for answers.

A number of building industry organizations became aware of the situation and stepped up to help. Because certain types of PPE, particularly N95 respirators, are widely used in construction, many firms were in a position to act quickly.

“I have neighbors who are in the medical profession, or that have family members who are, and there is a real and serious shortage of personal protective equipment throughout the region,” said Ryan Baker, a Mackenzie senior associate and a member of its structural engineering team. “We’re all thinking about the safety of our first responders and medical professionals who are doing everything they can to keep us healthy while, at the same time, considering the safety and health of their own families.”

After reading an email from a Portland Neighborhood Emergency Team, Baker suggested to Mackenzie’s disaster recovery task force and business continuity team that the firm donate its unused N95 masks from employee work kits. Mackenzie employees Cesar Villanueva and Mike Rueter then coordinated a company-wide roundup and delivered the masks to the designated Multnomah County drop-off site.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to homegrown solutions. Agencies are seeking specific equipment, which should be unused and in good condition. This includes latex-free gloves (sealed boxes only); procedural masks; surgical masks; N95 respirators and N95 filters; other respirators such as P100s and PAPRs, and associated supplies and parts; face shields; splash shields; gowns; hand sanitizer and disinfecting wipes.

“We first started talking about it around March 17 or 18 as news stories started coming out,” said Kirsten Adams, public affairs counsel for the Associated General Contractors’ Oregon-Columbia chapter. “As soon as we started hearing about the need, we tried to do something about it. Someone with OHSU reached out to me, and they were looking for PPE, so we were thinking about how to get this information out to our members and how do we act as a conduit for this.”

AGC quickly created a COVID-19 web page for members and issued a plea for donations at its March 20 board meeting. The group first connected with the Oregon Health Authority and its Salem drop site before coordinating with Oregon Health & Science University on another drop site in the South Waterfront District.

“We want to make it as easy as possible to get this into the hands of the people who need it most,” Adams said. “We’ve given our members as many options as we can.”

Trade groups, including unions, also responded to the call for PPE.

“We’re reaching out to everybody we know in our industry, and we’ve been able to collect a bunch of extras (N95 masks) from contractors who’ve had them,” said Robert Camarillo, executive secretary of the Oregon State Building and Construction Trades Council. “We were among the first group to be contacted.”

Camarillo added that unions around the country are mounting similar efforts.

“I talked to a business manager and he was dropping (equipment) off at a fire station earlier in the day,” he said. “And he said it was impressive to see how many people were donating.”

The AFL-CIO, added, has been doing the same around the country.

“That’s the labor movement jumping into action,” he said. “Everybody is making the necessary adjustments to adapt and help where they can, and we want to be there too.”

Other individual firms around the metro area are stepping up.

“We found and donated a few boxes that we had available to the hospitals,” said Todd Duwe, director of business development for Perlo Construction. “We are actually making our own masks currently. We gave away our N95s for the health care workers. We donated what we had to our health care clients we work with, so we are making our own now.”

The latter is a story in its own right.

“We have our own in-house counsel; she happens to be a seamstress,” Duwe said. “So she is making an initial batch of 500 (face masks) right now. In between looking at these Washington contract review items, she is sewing masks; I am not kidding. Everybody in the company is shifting a little to deal with this.”

Villanueva said early preparation, including Mackenzie’s creation of a disaster recovery task force, allowed action to be taken immediately.

“The team put in a lot of effort years ago to provide each employee with a small waist pack that had some basic first aid items and supplies to assist them in an emergency situation,” he said. “Gathering the N95 masks from those (packs) and dropping them off was the least that we could do. We were so happy to be able to help, and just thankful to our frontline medical teams.”

Awareness is critical, Adams said.

“We’re trying to keep it at the forefront of people’s minds,” she said. “Gathering hand sanitizers is a real need, and we’re trying to do as many little things like that as we can.”

The post One industry reaching out to another in need appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

It was at a national company meeting in Miami that Skanska USA Building‘s Steve Clem heard of a program to save the lives of opioid abusers in the construction industry.

A manager in the construction giant’s Boston office talked about opioid addiction and how it affects the construction industry in that city. He also explained naloxone, a potentially life-saving drug that can reverse opioid overdoes if properly administered.

“For some reason it just resonated with me,” said Clem, who serves as a senior vice president for project planning services and sustainability in Skanska’s Portland office.

He brought his concern about opioid overdoses to the SafeBuild Alliance, a nonprofit based in Gresham that provides construction safety education and training. Clem serves on SafeBuild’s board.

SafeBuild Alliance soon launched a program in partnership with the Oregon Health Authority, which provides kits for administering the medication but not the drug itself. Member companies are responsible for supplying the naloxone, administered as a nasal spray, at a cost of about $75 per two-pack. SafeBuild Alliance conducts training with construction workers and works with a Multnomah County physician to provide naloxone, which is also known by the brand names Narcan and Evzio.

Clem said he’s not aware of any local incidents of jobsite opioid overdoses. Nevertheless, Skanska has placed the antidote at jobsites since last summer.

It makes sense to get ahead of the problem, said Karen Blythe, executive director of the SafeBuild Alliance.

“There have been overdose situations I’ve heard of — not necessarily in the Portland area — but we know there’s an opioid epidemic here. So it’s just a matter of time, and we want people to be aware and know how to respond,” Blythe said.

Besides Skanska, other major contractors including Mortenson Construction and Howard S. Wright have participated in the opioid overdose training program.

Opioid addiction has hit the construction industry particularly hard as doctors overprescribed the medications for muscular-skeletal injuries and chronic pain, which are common among construction workers, said Cal Beyer, director of risk management for Lakeside Industries in Issaquah, Washington.

Prescriptions for opioids such as oxycodone and hydrocodone surged in the U.S. Abusers found the drugs could be crushed and snorted.

The drugs have been a key element in the “deaths of despair” that have lowered life spans around the nation, Beyer said. “Opioids made the existing issue with mental health and suicides a perfect storm,” he said.

The stigma around mental health issues extended to opioids, while illegal drugs still attracted far more public attention, Beyer said. More recently, awareness has improved, leading many doctors to tighten their opioid prescription practices and to more treatment and prevention programs.

SafeBuild launched its program earlier this year, and the plan is to make it an ongoing effort. “We have every intention of providing more training in 2020 and to raise more awareness,” Blythe said.

Training materials tell responders to first check for breathing and attempt to awaken the person who may be overdosing. After that, they’re instructed to call 911, begin chest compressions and then use naloxone if the victim has not responded.

Blythe compared naloxone to the automated external defibrillator units that many workplaces keep on hand in case of heart attacks.

“It’s part of their first aid, like they would use an AED,” she said. “It’s part of their first aid training.”

Responders won’t do any harm by using naloxone, even if the person is not overdosing, said Clem. “It’s another tool,” he said.

Naloxone’s shelf life is about 18 months. Skanska will donate any unused doses to clinics, allowing them to use it before it expires, Clem said.

The post Builders battle opioid epidemic appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The city of Portland is moving forward with a plan to construct a state-mandated water filtration plant despite an unexpected increase in the estimated cost that left some city councilors reeling from sticker shock.

During a council work session with Portland Water Bureau officials in September, bureau director Michael Stuhr revealed that the project’s cost – originally estimated in 2017 at about $350 million to $500 million – could now potentially be more than $850 million.

The main reason, explained Stuhr, is that original estimates didn’t include construction of pipelines to service the plant. That portion was not included in early estimates because at that point the city had not decided where to locate the facility.

Mayor Ted Wheeler, taken aback by the price escalation, let his displeasure with the omission be known.

“It would have been very helpful for me to know that what we were talking about at that time was not the total project cost – that we were talking about merely one component of an overall system,” Wheeler told Stuhr. “We needed to know that we were talking about a piece of a system that could not operate, work or function in any reasonable manner in the absence of the rest of the system.

“I just want to put that on the table,” he continued. “I’m disappointed in that.”

The project is being undertaken to address regulatory requirements and potential impacts of natural disasters on the Bull Run watershed. After multiple tests in 2017 revealed the continued presence of the pathogen cryptosporidium in the watershed, the Oregon Health Authority revoked Portland’s variance from federal rules requiring treatment of cryptosporidium. The city then entered a compliance agreement with OHA requiring construction of a treatment facility that is operable by September 2027.

During the September work session, Stuhr and bureau officials presented city councilors with three options for the project, with cost estimates ranging from an estimated $670 million to meet minimum requirements to $850 million for a more robust version.

After Wheeler and Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty balked at the price, Water Bureau officials solicited feedback from the Portland Utility Board and Citizens Utility Board before returning in front of City Council Nov. 13 to recommend an $820 million option.

The recommended option would include most of the features of the full implementation option – including ozone and conventional filtration, two pipelines into and out of the facility for redundancy, and clear well storage – but would have a slightly lower treatment capacity of 145 million gallons per day, resulting in a $30 million cost savings.

City councilors on Nov. 27 approved adopting the recommended option to guide design and implementation. They also voted to authorize a $51 million maximum contract with Stantec Consulting Services Inc. for design of the water treatment facility, which will be located on a 95-acre parcel in unincorporated eastern Multnomah County. Both items passed with 3-0 votes; Hardesty and Chloe Eudaly were absent.

A separate contract for design of the pipelines servicing the plant, estimated to cost $20 million more, is expected to be issued in spring 2020. Design work is set to begin next year and run through the end of 2022.

The bureau ought to have a more concrete number on the project’s cost by the middle of 2021, when the design is anticipated to be about 30 percent complete. Construction is expected to begin in 2022 and run through the end of 2026.

The filtration facility will come without the bells and whistles that have led to cost overruns on other city projects, according to Commissioner Amanda Fritz, who oversees the water bureau.

“I have directed the water bureau staff to work toward a no-frills facility,” she said at last week’s council meeting. “No interpretive center, no fancy finishes except landscaping and exterior improvements designed to fit into the surrounding area.”

Wheeler, recognizing the importance of the project, called it the best long-term option for maintaining a safe drinking water supply. At the same time, he cautioned that the council had yet to solidify a cost estimate, and the current $820 million price tag is a low-confidence approximation that is likely to increase.

“The cost of construction, the cost of labor are going up, and so it is my expectation that the cost of the project will go up,” he stated before voting to move forward.

The post Filtration plant project advances despite cost increase appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Portland’s City Council must decide by early August whether to direct the Water Bureau to build a $150 million ultraviolet-light reactor or a $350 million to $500 million water filtration plant to fight microscopic parasites.

The city has been ordered by the Oregon Health Authority to treat its water for cryptosporidium after the parasites turned up in a series of tests in January, February and March.

Health authorities revoked Portland‘s 10-year variance from federal drinking water rules requiring treatment for cryptosporidium in the aftermath of the tests that detected the parasite.

OHA issued the variance in 2012 and revoked it on May 19. The City Council held a work session Tuesday to discuss the way forward.

“We cut the deal that we did, and it became obvious that our water system does not deliver water of the quality of a filtration plant,” said Michael Stuhr, director of the city’s Water Bureau.

City commissioners now must make a decision quickly. They must decide on a treatment option by Aug. 11 to adhere to an OHA compliance schedule. To meet that deadline, an Aug. 2 hearing has been set aside for commissioners to pass a resolution directing the Water Bureau on a course of action.

Building a UV treatment facility would be cheaper and faster. It could be built in about five years, Stuhr said. A UV treatment facility would also fit at the city’s headwaters facility at Bull Run Lake.

A filtration plant would cost much more, take 10-12 years to construct and would be built most likely at Lusted Hill, on a parcel along Carpenter Lane in east Gresham, Stuhr said. The city purchased the 90-acre site years ago with a treatment facility in mind.

Either facility could include solar panels to offset their energy use, Stuhr said.

Filtration plants are more effective than UV facilities for a wide variety of water-quality issues, Stuhr said.

“The water professionals’ answer has been filtration plants, because they are so effective and have been able to handle anything anyone’s cooked up,” he said.

Portland could build a UV facility that would work for 20 to 30 years, while setting aside funds to convert the facility to a treatment plant, Stuhr said.

Cryptosporidium outbreaks cause a diarrheal disease that is particularly dangerous to those with weakened immune systems, such as AIDS patients, according to the Centers for Disease Control. During the worst such recorded outbreak in U.S. history, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1993, 69 deaths were attributed to the cryptosporidium outbreak, according to a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel account.

Such an outbreak is a possibility in Portland as long as the water is untreated, Stuhr said.

“If crypto takes hold, it can wreak havoc with your most vulnerable populations,” he said.

No outbreak was detected in Portland despite the presence of the parasites earlier this year, said Paul Lewis, a Multnomah County health officer.

The post Portland faces deadline for water treatment project appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The Portland City Council is scheduled to decide Wednesday on whether to demolish a historic building and portions of the reservoirs in Washington Park.

Council deliberations on the topic start at 2 p.m. in City Hall, 1221 S.W. 4^th Ave. At the meeting, city commissioners will decide whether to grant a Portland Water Bureau land use application for a $76 million project to build a new underground reservoir in place of the park’s existing open-air reservoirs.

With the land use application, Water Bureau officials are seeking the City Council’s OK to demolish the historic Weir Building and remove portions of two existing reservoir basins to make way for the proposed Washington Park Reservoir Improvements Project. Wednesday’s council meeting follows two public hearings held in March and April to gather feedback on the project and the demolition plans.

The proposed project would create a fountain consisting of a series of tiered pools and a nature area atop a planned 15-million-gallon underground drinking water reservoir in the footprint of one of the existing reservoirs. Washington Park’s other reservoir would be decommissioned and a lowland habitat area and reflecting pool would replace it.

Officials announced last year that they planned to proceed with the project after receiving a mandate from the Oregon Health Authority to follow a federal regulation that outlaws the use of uncovered reservoirs to store finished drinking water. The rule is intended to reduce the risk of exposure to contaminants.

Hoffman Construction crews are scheduled to start work on the project on July 1, 2016, and wrap up in late 2020.

The post City Council to deliberate on reservoir demolitions appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Two of Portland‘s open drinking water reservoirs will be shut down, following a recent mandate from the Oregon Health Authority.

Officials representing Mayor Charlie Hales’ office announced Monday that they will disconnect a reservoir at Mount Tabor and one at Washington Park, after an unsuccessful appeal to the OHA. That action was triggered by an unfunded federal mandate (the Long Term 2 Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule, or LT2) that outlaws the use of uncovered reservoirs to store finished drinking water. The rule is intended to reduce the risk of exposure to contaminants.

City officials made numerous attempts to obtain a variance or delay in rule compliance because of cost. OHA refused the latest request in May.

The 75-million-gallon Mount Tabor facility won’t be disconnected until Dec. 31, 2015, when the $138 million Powell Butte reservoir and the $70 million Kelly Butte reservoir are expected to be complete. While one reservoir is being decommissioned at Washington Park, another will be renovated and covered with a reflecting pool.

In the past, the Friends of the Reservoirs advocacy group has contended that replacement projects are wasteful and unnecessary. In lieu of new construction, the group favored the idea of placing synthetic rubber covers over the open-air facilities.

Officials made no mention of the synthetic rubber covers concept, but said they would work with community members to preserve the historic structures at each reservoir. They also claimed that they would “heighten scrutiny of all capital projects and contracts to keep rate increases as low as possible.”

The post City will decommission two reservoirs appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.