The Portland Housing Bureau is gaining a new interim director, the city announced Wednesday. Quisha Light will start on May 18 after the current interim director, Michael Buonocore, steps down to become executive director of Home Forward.

Light, currently the city’s Public Works customer service division manager, oversees citywide customer service strategy, service delivery systems, affordability programs, and customer experience modernization. She joined the city team in 2022 as the Portland Water Bureau‘s director of customer service and led major technology modernization efforts as well as strengthened end-to-end customer operations. She later served as the bureau’s interim director.

“I am grateful to Quisha for her willingness to step up and lead this bureau and ensure there is no lapse in leadership as the city makes challenging budget decisions to address the ongoing housing and budgetary crises,” Donnie Oliveira, deputy city administrator for community and economic development, stated in a city press release. “She brings a customer-focused lens to the work, and when we are talking about providing housing to Portlanders, that service can be life-saving.”

Before entering public service, Light spent over a decade at Portland General Electric working in legal, strategy, integrated resource planning and product development roles, the press release states. She launched innovative clean energy and demand response initiatives. Prior to joining PGE, she practiced law in Tennessee.

The city’s Community and Economic Development service area and the Portland Housing Bureau plan to open a recruitment process for a permanent director early this summer. The bureau expects Light to serve in the interim until the permanent director assumes the role, Portland Housing Bureau spokesperson Gabriel Mathews stated in an email, adding that there is not a firm timeframe for when that transition will take place.

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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.

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A neighborhood group opposed to construction of the $2.1 billion Bull Run water filtration plant isn’t giving up yet.

On Friday, an attorney for the Cottrell Community Planning Organization filed a notice of intent to appeal a Multnomah County hearings officer’s determination that the infrastructure project could proceed.

The Cottrell group earlier appealed a county hearings officer’s determination to the state Land Use Board of Appeals. Then in January, LUBA remanded the matter back to a hearings officer.

After an April hearing, hearings officer Liz Fancher ruled in June that the project could resume construction.

Cottrell, represented by Bateman Seidel attorney Carrie Richter, has argued the county failed to fully consider natural resources in its decision approving construction. (Editor’s note: Richter co-writes monthly land use commentaries to the 91��Ƶ.)

The Portland Water Bureau halted work on the massive project in February after the remand. Construction is only now ramping up, Water Bureau spokesman Brandon Zero said.

Zero vowed the Water Bureau will move forward.

“We will continue to address whatever issue is brought forward because nearly a million people around the region depend on us to provide clean and safe water,” he stated in an email on Friday. “Unfortunately, the cost of this appeal will ultimately be borne by our customers, even though it stems from objections raised by a small group of residents who live near the site. We have won at every stage in the land use process, including the recent Multnomah County hearings officer decision to reapprove our permits.”

Zero added that Fancher’s June decision “reaffirms this is the right place and the right time for this project.”

The city of Portland faces a Sept. 30, 2027, regulatory deadline to provide filtered drinking water to customers after a parasite was repeatedly found in the city’s water supply.

Construction on the infrastructure project is led by a joint venture of MWH Constructors and Kiewit Corp. They broke ground on the site in June 2024.

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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. “T��� 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 on Friday ordered a halt to construction at the $2.1 billion Bull Run Filtration Project site after an adverse land-use ruling. It’s unclear how long construction will be paused at the site.

The Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals in January remanded a decision to Multnomah County, saying the county had failed to fully consider natural resources in its decision approving construction. With the legal matter on remand, the Water Bureau on Friday paused work on the project.

“There are many unknowns at this time – including the duration of the pause – but we’ll be working with the county and LUBA to better understand the timeline and project impacts in coming days and weeks,” Water Bureau spokeswoman Felicia Heaton stated in an email Friday.

The city is up against a deadline imposed by the Oregon Health Authority to deliver filtered water to customers by Sept. 30, 2027. The construction of the plant stems from the discovery in 2017 of the parasite cryptosporidium in Portland’s water supply.

“While we respect the land use process and will fully comply with the remand, every day of delay drives up construction costs and increases the risk of missing our public health compliance deadline — challenges that directly impact our communities, businesses and ratepayers,” Priya Dhanapal, deputy city administrator for public works, stated in a news release.

Mayor Keith Wilson, in a statement Friday, said the project is “the right thing to do to protect public health.”

“We will continue to participate faithfully in the land use process and look forward to addressing the issues on remand so we can get back to building this critical project as efficiently and cost effectively as possible,” Wilson added.

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.

Workers at the site on Friday received text messages saying “construction is temporarily suspended until further notice.” Non-manual staff were advised to report to work on Monday to help guide the project through its next phase.

Craft employees were told not to report to work Saturday through Tuesday.

“Some critical construction operations will continue and craft employees will be notified by their direct employer in the next few days,” a message stated.

“We are sorry for this unplanned disruption of your good work and will inform you of the next steps when given guidance by the Portland Water Bureau,” another message stated.

Project supporters are exploring another option: state legislation that would exempt the project from zoning requirements.

Senate Bill 936 would make a “public health infrastructure facility” an allowed use in any zone if the facility were to face a construction deadline from the Oregon Health Authority, Department of Environmental Quality or the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The bill would essentially strip local authorities of land use approval powers over such projects.

The bill is sponsored in the Senate by Sens. Chris Gorsek, D-Gresham, and Sen. James Manning Jr., D-Eugene. It has been referred to the Veterans, Emergency Management, Federal and World Affairs Committee.

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PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Portland leaders have unanimously agreed to pay $200,000 in attorney fees after a doomed bid to avoid releasing decades-old legal documents.

The documents the city officials were forced to release deal with the long-contentious issue of how utility bureaus are supposed to handle ratepayer money, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported.

Retired developer Mark Bartlett first requested three legal opinions and a memo from the city in September 2015.

At the time, the city was preparing to disconnect open-air reservoirs in Mount Tabor Park — an area where both the Bureau of Parks and Recreation and the Water Bureau owned land. Bartlett believed the city was inappropriately treating the land as if it had one owner — instead of being owned by the water bureau, which is funded by ratepayers, and the parks bureau, which gets money from the general fund.

Bartlett asked for legal opinions and a memo he had seen mentioned in an email, dating back to the 1980s and 1990, which he believed detailed the rules around keeping assets of rate-payer bureaus distinct from those of general fund bureaus.

He believed the documents would show the city was knowingly violating its own rules.

The city denied the request, claiming attorney-client privilege, which gives people the right to keep their communication with their attorney confidential. Bartlett appealed to the Multnomah County district attorney. Then district attorney Rod Underhill sided with him, citing a state law that said — with few exceptions — documents older than 25 years must be disclosed.

But Portland’s election officials made the rare decision to keep fighting, reportedly worried they would receive inferior legal advice if their attorneys knew everything would one day be made public. The city sued Bartlett, asking a judge to declare that the documents he wanted were covered by attorney-client privilege.

The move concerned government transparency advocates.

A Multnomah County Circuit Court judge ruled for the city. But the Oregon Court of Appeals reversed that decision and on appeal the Oregon Supreme Court ruled for Bartlett in April. Justices wrote that they had “no authority to rewrite public records law” and suggested the city take the issue to the state legislature.

According to deputy city attorney Denis Vannier, who presented to City Council on Wednesday, Bartlett’s attorneys said they were going to ask for $405,000 in attorney fees. The city agreed to settle with Bartlett and pay $200,000.

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The Portland Water Bureau has completed upgrades to its Lusted Hill treatment facility intended to reduce lead exposure in home drinking water.

With the improvements, the system now uses sodium carbonate and carbon dioxide to increase the pH and alkalinity of Bull Run water, making it less corrosive to lead and other metals found in some home and building plumbing.

MWH Constructors served as general contractor for the project. The upgraded treatment system came online last week.

The project team exceeded equity contracting goals, according to the Water Bureau. More than $4 million, or approximately 55 percent of the project’s hard construction costs, was subcontracted to firms certified by Oregon’s Certification Office for Business Inclusion and Diversity (COBID); the city’s goal was 22 percent.

More than 11,000 work hours were performed by minority or women apprentices and journey-level tradespeople; that participation percentage exceeded the city’s goal of 31 percent, the Water Bureau stated.

One percent of the contract dollars will be invested in the city’s Community Opportunities and Enhancement Program that provides grants to increase diversity of construction industry business owners and tradespeople in Portland.

“T��� Improved Corrosion Control Treatment Facility is our strongest tool yet to make drinking water safer for everyone, regardless of the plumbing inside their home, school and building,” Water Bureau Director Gabriel Solmer stated in a news release. “I am proud of our dedicated water quality and operations teams who have honored our commitment to the community.”

The project was financed in part by a Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act loan from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That money helped maintain affordable water rates, the bureau stated.

The Water Bureau is planning to build a new plant to filter cryptosporidium, a harmful microorganism. Construction is expected to begin next year. The plant must be online by Sept. 30, 2027, to comply with state and federal rules.

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Jodie Inman, a 13-year Portland Water Bureau veteran, recently took over as the department’s chief engineer.

Inman was selected after a competitive process. She is the second woman in the bureau’s 150-year history to serve in the role. Her predecessor, Teresa Elliott, will retire this summer.

“I’m honored,” Inman stated in a press release. “I think it speaks to the efforts that the Water Bureau, the city, and the industry are making in being more inclusive. I’m thankful to have worked in places that have had females in leadership and encouraged growth.

“For me, leadership is about building relationships and seeking to understand people’s perspectives. At some point, a decision needs to be made, but I want to be there for meaningful dialogue.”

Inman has worked on some of the most critical infrastructure projects in the Water Bureau’s recent history, including the Bull Run treatment projects and Willamette River Crossing. Her focus has been on project budgets and affordability.

“T���se projects are an opportunity to provide reliable and safe drinking water to our customers and future Portlanders,” she stated. “I am honored to lead the teams improving seismic resilience, for life and safety, but also to support economic recovery. I will ensure that we have the tools to adapt to factors like climate change and future regulations – not to mention the highly important everyday work of maintaining, repairing, and replacing our aging infrastructure.”

Most recently, Inman served as interim chief engineer for three months. Prior to that, she was the engineering manager in the bureau’s design group.

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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.

“T��� 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. “T��� 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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Even as Teresa Elliott’s career in the public sector comes to a close, she is continuing to garner accolades.

Elliott has worked for the Portland Water Bureau for nearly 25 years, including the past five as chief engineer. She is preparing to retire, but recently was named the 2020 Government Engineer of the Year by the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Oregon Section. The honor, following a nomination by peers, recognizes distinguished work in public service and contributions to the community.

In 2020, when project teams oftentimes faced exceptional challenges, Elliott helped oversee completion of the massive Washington Park Reservoir. The 12.4 million-gallon, seismically resilient structure will serve the city of Portland in the footprint where an open-air reservoir sat previously.

That was just one of the numerous projects Elliott worked on in recent years to improve seismic strength of city infrastructure. Recently, she announced her plans to retire.

“I’ve known Teresa for 17 years, and she is a force of nature and a role model for young women and gay and lesbian engineers,” said Mike Stuhr, a retired Water Bureau administrator and the person who appointed Elliott chief engineer. “Teresa has added tremendous value to the entire metro area by managing huge projects – the new reservoirs at Washington Park, Powell Butte and Kelly Butte – to ensure that our water supply can be restored after the ‘big one.’ It’s really fantastic recognition for an engineer and a woman engineer in this state who has contributed to the community that we live in.”

Elliott was unavailable for a full interview. However, via email she stated she was inspired by two former presidents.

“I am surprised, honored and touched by the people that believed in and nominated me for the award,” she stated. “I have been in public (service) for over forty years. I listened over the years to presidents John F. Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt asking not what the country can do for us, but rather what we can do for our country, community, etc., for the greater good. That translates to public service for me. That, along with the golden rule that I was raised by – do unto others as you want done to you and lead by example – are how I live my life.”

In the 1990s, Elliott and Mary Ellen Collentine, now retired, were among the first women engineers to join the Water Bureau. They worked together on numerous projects, Collentine said.

Elliott “was always very thorough in everything she did; (she was) technically astute,” Collentine said. “She had a way of making her opinion known and being able to advocate for her opinion but in a positive way. I would say when I first came to work for the Water Bureau, I don’t think there were any other women in the engineering group.”

Over the years, both Elliott and Collentine rose through the ranks and helped the Water Bureau upgrade infrastructure that in many cases was built in the late 19th century.

“Teresa has always had an interest in seismic resilience and emergency response, and we kind of shared that,” Collentine said. “She’s always been involved with ASCE, and she was on the committee that went and looked at the infrastructure impacts after earthquakes. She even went to Turkey to study this – and that was close to 20 years ago.”

Collentine added that she got to know Elliott particularly well in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when the Water Bureau sent a crew to New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to help them recover.

“That was kind of a bonding experience for us,” Collentine said. “No other water utility had done that. We were the first.”

Out of that experience, she added, the national Water/Wastewater Agency Response Network was formed. It facilitates communication between public utility agencies following a natural disaster or other emergency. Oregon has its own chapter, and both Collentine and Elliott have played active roles.

Elliott was recognized by the 91��Ƶ as a Newsmaker in 2016. This recent honor from ASCE is special, Collentine said.

“I’m just so pleased she’s been awarded this by the Oregon section of ASCE,” she said. “I think it’s well-deserved, particularly with her leadership on the reservoirs and her leadership as our chief engineer. I think it’s really great that her peers are recognizing her in the excellence she’s provided to the bureau and the wider engineering community here in Oregon.”

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