City officials in Coos Bay say they will likely need at least $80 million for wastewater treatment over the next 20 to 30 years, and they want to start by building a new plant.

Coos Bay has two wastewater treatment facilities. The proposed one would replace one that exists on the bay.

“It would be double the size,” said Jennifer Wirsing, the city’s engineering service coordinator. “We haven’t necessarily gotten any larger in terms of population as a city, but it’s a matter of inflow and infiltration. ‘I and I’ is no stranger to these coastal cities.”

Broad plans for the facility were sent to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality for approval. Meanwhile, engineers at will create some preliminary designs.

Project design will cost $2 million to $2.4 million, Wirsing said. Construction would be $20 million to $24 million, she said.

The plan is for the facility to feature sequence batch reactors, Wirsing said, so that wastewater can be treated with ultraviolet light instead of chlorine. Compared to other systems, this one is more efficient, simpler to use and less expensive to operate, she said.

“What we’re choosing is not necessarily new technology, but it’s tried and true,” she added.

Maintaining wastewater treatment facilities on the coast is difficult, Wirsing said. “We have the elements here,” she said. “Oregon is a harsh climate no matter where you live, but our plant is located right in the bay. Between the rain and the wind – and even the seagulls and other animals – we definitely have a very harsh climate over here. We also have the salinity from the salt air.”

The wastewater treatment plant that Coos Bay officials want to replace was built in the 1960s and upgraded in the ’90s.

“There are parts that date back to the ’50s and ’70s,” Public Works Director Jim Hossley said.

The new plant, scheduled to be completed in 2017, would be a block away.

“We’ve been working on this since 2007,” City Manager Roger Craddock said. “It would be a lot nicer if we were flat and didn’t need all this infrastructure.”

Craddock said this is the most money the city will spend on a single project in the next 20 years. Nonetheless, he added, there are other expenses. Coos Bay also has 27 pump stations that regularly need to be updated.

“We do about one pump station a year,” Craddock said. “We finish one and start to plan for the next. Those can be rather expensive in themselves. They can run up to $1 million.”

The plant will be paid for by local residents. Coos Bay residents have seen their sewer rates go up around 6 percent a year for the last couple of years. They should not expect that to change, Craddock said. Nonetheless, he added, Coos Bay’s sewer rates are lower than those in other communities.

In fact, according to Craddock, city officials had trouble getting grants for the project because sewer rates are so low.

Electricity alone is a major expense, Craddock said.

“It all has to run whether or not there’s electricity,” he said.

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A car in Douglas County was sprayed with raw sewage while it was following a truck from a portable toilet company.

Unfortunately for the company, the driver of the car was a wastewater inspector for the Department of Environmental Quality.

This sort of thing almost never happens, said DEQ wastewater specialist Dan Wiltsie. The agency has a protocol to make sure providers of portable toilets are following health and safety rules. However, he said, it requires inspectors to go to the wastewater. The wastewater almost never comes to them.

“It seems to be pretty rare from what I’ve observed,” Wiltsie said. “This is the only incident of this sort that I know of in at least the last five years.”

Best Portable Toilets LLC in Grants Pass was fined $1,625 last week for the Aug. 2 incident.

According to a DEQ press release, company owner David Blalock is appealing the penalty. That’s not true, Blalock said. “I don’t know why everyone is calling us about this,” he said. “We are not appealing. We’re just paying the fine. I called the DEQ and told them that. I don’t know why they say we’re appealing.”

The evidence would be hard to ignore, Wiltsie said. At least it was for the DEQ inspector who reportedly just happened to be following a Best Portable Toilets truck when his windshield was sprayed from leaking 275-gallon tanks.

State law requires tanks pumping or storing sewage to be at least 550 gallons. The law also requires they not leak. Toward that end, Wiltsie said they are supposed to be made of airtight metal, be fully enclosed and have lids.

According to Wiltsie, two of the Best Toilet tanks were not fully enclosed. The inspector followed the truck to a wastewater facility in Roseburg and discovered the leaks.

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Last summer, a city-owned sewer pipe on city-owned property in Southeast Portland backed up, leaking sewage into a business building.

Mark LaNoue, owner of the at 1235 S.E. Division St., was upset when he saw the $40,000 worth of damage. He was even more upset when he found out the city wouldn’t pay for it.

“(City officials) just made some excuse of it being an old line and how they can’t be responsible for all the old lines in the city,” LaNoue said. “No progress has been made, and it’s their problem.”

Broken pipes are a city problem, according to Abby Coppock, a spokeswoman for . However, the city won’t pay for damage resulting from a pipe that has been maintained and is not in physical disrepair, she added.

The pipe that damaged LaNoue’s property was deemed up to city standards.

“There are times that backups occur and you can’t pinpoint what happened or if anyone was at fault … That was the case with this pipe,” Coppock said. “In general, if the pipe has been inspected and maintained by the city and judged as not being in physical disrepair, then the city doesn’t typically pay for damages.”

The Bureau of Environmental Services is responsible for cleaning city pipes. The bureau’s goals are to clean pipes every six years and inspect them thoroughly (with video equipment) every 12 years.

This information is . The website shows that the pipe, which is behind LaNoue’s building and travels down an alleyway owned by the city, had detailed inspections performed in 2001 and 2009; cleanings in 2001, 2002 and 2009; and a repair near its north manhole in 2009.

The pipe did not receive a cleaning in 2008 – six years after the previous one. Nevertheless, the pipe was not considered in disrepair when the clog was found, Coppock said, even though the pipe was crushed in certain places.

“They are goals,” she said in reference to the delayed cleaning. “This claim was denied on the basis that the backup was not the city’s fault.”

LaNoue said that the city originally promised it would cover restoration costs. After the sewage was found in late August, he called city officials, who then discovered the problem.

According to LaNoue, officials with Risk Management Services told him to obtain a cost estimate by hiring a restoration agency and then sending them the bill. But officials returned the bill, saying that they had determined the damage was not the city’s fault.

LaNoue said his insurance policy will most likely cover the cost of repairs. Many insurance agencies have commercial policies that cover water backflow damage from neighboring properties, according to Todd Plummer, a local insurance agent.

But the damage could extend beyond floors and walls. As it stands now, the building’s main room and kitchen are missing pieces of floor. And for many weeks, building tenants had to use a portable bathroom while the existing one was being restored.

Although tenants have been supportive throughout the cleanup process, LaNoue said efforts to attract new ones could take a hit.

“… obviously (the building) doesn’t show very well,” he said. “Whether this is going to keep them from leasing space – I’m not sure.”

The city has agreed to pay $5,000 toward LaNoue’s insurance deductible, Coppock said. LaNoue claimed that the city had increased that amount to $10,000; however, Coppock denied that. She added that the city is paying only because the backup occurred on city property.

LaNoue believes that is an admission of guilt and is considering the possibility of pursuing legal action. He may have a case, according to Marc Johnston, founder of the , if it can be determined how the pipe was damaged.

“Generally, there’s a reason (why) pipes damage. I’m sure there would be some reasoning (in this case),” he said. “The question is: Could the city have prevented that from happening by proper maintenance, by proper materials or by some sort of safety measure?”

At this point, LaNoue is just concentrating on repairing his building. He believes this is a cautionary tale for owners of properties near city sewer lines.

“We’ve been told this happens all the time – where the city won’t pay for it,” he said. “It’s not right.”

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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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Reliance on state-of-the-art technology can lead to unforeseen costs, and the Eugene Water & Electric Board is paying the price.

EWEB opted for a $300,000 cutting-edge system to manage the wastewater generated at its new operations center. The innovative treatment system, which has been installed at a handful of facilities in Oregon, involves a delicate start-up period and ongoing maintenance, and some owners adapt to it more easily than others. Unanticipated levels of water usage contributed to EWEB’s decision to spend $55,000 to connect its facility’s pipes to Eugene’s conventional sewer system.

Ecological wastewater treatment, which uses microorganisms and living plants to clean wastewater, can drastically reduce water usage. And the innovation is growing in popularity as the technology advances. Both EWEB and the Port of Portland last year installed such living systems.

But while EWEB is still sorting out issues with the “Eco-Machine” at its Roosevelt Operations Center after one year of use, the Port of Portland’s “Living Machine” has been running smoothly, although it too required some tweaking.

“(The Eco-Machine) wasn’t really working as well as we had hoped,” said Lance Robertson, a spokesman for EWEB. “It took us a while to figure out what was preventing it from working as was planned.”

EWEB did not initially connect its operations center to the city’s sewer system, hoping that the Eco-Machine would handle all water treatment on-site. But the utility paid $30,000 to connect to the conventional sewer lines and $25,000 to add necessary system controls, according to Robertson. The center officially hooked up to the city sewer lines on Nov. 1, he said.

, the project’s general contractor/construction manager, also paid a small amount to connect the systems and was responsible for purchasing the meter, according to Robertson.

“The concept has very noble environmental goals,” said Larry Banks, principal at , the firm that designed EWEB’s operations center. “But the owner of the system does need to go in with their eyes open and understand the ongoing maintenance effort that a system like this requires.”

When nearly 300 employees at the Roosevelt Operations Center began moving into the facility in early winter 2010, cold weather prevented the Eco-Machine’s cultures from developing properly. Then, when workers from the facility’s maintenance shops washed their equipment throughout the winter, surges in water use overflowed the system.

“The term eco-machine implies something comes in on a truck and just works as if thousands are built in a factory,” Banks said. “It’s a bit of a misnomer. In hindsight, I wish we had more fully engaged operations and maintenance staff in discussions about maintaining the system during design.”

The Living Machine, a similar system installed at the Port of Portland’s headquarters, also endured a rocky start. The system, featured prominently in the lobby and at the building’s entrance, went into toxic shock after a couple of weeks of use at full occupancy.

The microorganisms that aid the cleaning process can handle only a limited amount of activity at first. When the building became fully operational in May, the system was overwhelmed by waste from 430 employees, and the plants started dying.

Unlike the EWEB facility, the Port of Portland’s headquarters was already hooked up to the city sewer system. When samples indicated that the system wasn’t functioning properly, the port diverted the water into Portland’s sewer system and started feeding the machine powdered milk to reintroduce the productive bacteria.

“It was a good lesson,” said Dan Gilkison, the port’s lead engineer for the headquarters project. “Now we control how much (wastewater) we put into the system at any given time so the machine sees a constant stream, which is what it likes.”

The system was back on pace after approximately two months and has since functioned smoothly, according to Gilkison. The Living Machine helps decrease water usage by approximately 75 percent in comparison to a similar-size office building.

The plants and organisms in EWEB’s Eco-Machine also have started to thrive, according to Robinson, and the system is still being monitored so that its effectiveness can be evaluated.

But some of the challenges both facilities faced can be traced to the fact that they introduced the technology into new buildings, which makes it difficult for designers to accurately predict the waste stream and water flows.

“In a brand new building, you can get surprised during the start-up – and you have to be prepared for that,” said Will Kirksey, a global development officer at , the corporation that provided the system for the port headquarters. “If you have an existing building, you can see what’s coming in so you know how to prepare the system.”

Despite the challenges, people involved with the projects stand behind the technology and expect to see more of these systems installed in the future.

Kirksey cited a Living Machine being developed at the new headquarters for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. The wastewater system will be done in January, but construction crews will still be working on the building’s interior until the summer; by using the restroom in the interim, they will make the Living Machine more robust and better able to handle the transition into full occupancy.

“This is all a part of trying to be more sustainable and trying to do the right thing,” Robinson said. “Oftentimes there are these technical issues that get in the way of that. We’re glad we were able to figure it out and get the thing running.”

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In some parts of Portland, sewer pipes are as clogged fatty arteries. In both cases, it’s really gross and the culprit is the same: oils and grease from fried foods. The city spends more than $12 million a year to fix sewer lines clogged with grease and treat gunky wastewater.

The city is instituting a series of to save money and that connect to the more than 2,000 food service buildings that discharge high amounts of organic sludge into the sewer system. In so-called “accelerated grease cleaning areas,” sewer pipes need to be cleaned 20 to 30 times more frequently than normal pipes.

Starting next year, the city will start charging more of these food service buildings to reduce residential sewer fees and the fees of businesses that already pay extra to clean out the grease they discharge. Also, all new food service businesses – as well as current businesses located in accelerated grease cleaning areas – will be required to install grease removal devices

Portland’s pipes won’t be clean unless the flow of grease ebbs away a bit. Hopefully these measures stick more than the greasy goo they hope to clean up.

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The olfactory gland that allows us to smell is located next to the frontal lobe, the brain’s memory bank. It’s no surprise then that the smell – and stigma – of sewage can linger in the mind for years. As New Yorkers go back to treating the Hudson River as the reviled industrial wasteland of yore, Southwest Portland experiences its second sewage spill of the week.

The New York Times yesterday how a fire theoretically caused by an in one of the New York City’s largest wastewater treatment plants unleashed millions of gallons of untreated sewage into the surrounding waterways, hurting local water recreation businesses. On a much smaller scale, a sanitary sewer (a pipe that contains only sewage and not storm water run off) became blocked and 450 to 900 gallons of sewage yesterday into a pond that flows into Cedar Mill Creek in Southwest Portland.

Just as it will take time for New Yorkers to shake off the stigma of a polluted Hudson – again – I wonder how much longer Southwest Portland residents and those involved in building and maintaining buildings in the area will put up with this sh- …situation.

Photo by via Flickr

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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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