Project name: Dog River Fish Screening & Passage Improvements

Location: Mt. Hood

Completion: November 2024

Size: 18,000 square feet

Cost: $2,607,356

Owner/Developer: City of The Dalles

Engineer: Jacobs

General Contractor: Tapani Inc.

Submitting Company: Tapani Inc.

Subcontractors: Arrow Timber Framing, Bar M Steel, Brothers Concrete Cutting, Columbia West Engineering, Emmert International, Hage Electric, Hood River Sand and Gravel, Ralph’s Concrete Pumping, Windsor Engineers

In the remote reaches of Mt. Hood National Forest, a critical infrastructure project has successfully secured the water supply for 15,700 residents while enhancing local fish habitat.

Tapani, in partnership with the City of The Dalles, recently completed a comprehensive river intake project that replaced an outdated dam with advanced fish screening and passage systems for the city’s municipal water supply. The complex undertaking required removing an existing gaging weir and transforming the dam’s spillway into a rock ramp fishway to support fish migration. The construction included six rock ramps, a new fish diversion channel, fish screens, a fish bypass flume, headgates and a control sill.

The Tapani team discovered that the dam’s bottom elevation was too high, which led to an unexpected full removal and replacement of the structure. Despite this challenge and the site’s extremely remote location, the team completed the project within the strict in-water work window. The isolation of the site required extensive coordination with vendors and suppliers, who needed precise directions due to the absence of cellular service in the area. The proactive approach helped avoid delays and ensured a smooth flow of materials throughout the project.

The team employed an innovative shoring technique that enhanced both safety and efficiency. By flipping the end of the shoring box upward, they maintained continuous footing formation while ensuring full trench protection. This method streamlined workflow, minimized downtime and reduced material costs and labor expenses.

Several partners were instrumental to the project’s success, including Arrow Timber Framing, Hage Electric, Bar M Steel and Emmert International, which handled heavy lifting and transport.

The Oregon Department of State Lands recognized the project with its prestigious Stream Award, highlighting the initiative’s innovation, environmental impact and lasting benefits.

Beyond improving infrastructure, the project serves as the main water supply for The Dalles, ensuring a reliable and sustainable source while supporting long-term economic growth. The fish passage systems contribute to protecting local ecosystems, striking a balance between the city’s water needs and environmental preservation.

As the city looks toward the future, this upgraded system stands as a testament to collaborative problem-solving and sustainable infrastructure development.

“This project supports a resilient water supply for the next century for the City of The Dalles and stewardship of cold, headwater streams near Mount Hood,” noted Jacobs Engineering’s Brady Fuller in the project nomination form.

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By PETER FAIRLEY
InvestigateWest

Can slicing a 100-mile trench into the bed of the Columbia River be good for the environment? The answer is a big yes, says a team of energy developers that proposes submerging power cables in the riverbed.

The developers say the cables could deliver “clean” energy that will be crucial for getting the most densely developed areas of Cascadia off fossil fuels.

A proposal by energy developer Sun2o Partners and transmission developer PowerBridge would insert the cables into the Columbia at The Dalles in Oregon. This electrical on-ramp is near the wind farms and solar farms installed along the Columbia Gorge in eastern Oregon and Washington.

The cables also would intersect the monster transmission lines at the Bonneville Power Administration’s Big Eddy substation, drawing cheaper solar power from the Southwest, steadier wind power from Montana and Wyoming, and reliable backup power from British Columbia’s supersized hydropower reservoirs.

But even climate-conscious developers can’t make plans involving a natural resource like the Columbia River without causing uneasiness among those concerned with ecosystems and communities. Along the Columbia, those affected would include tribal nations and unique cultural interests.

Sun2o and PowerBridge propose to bring their cables ashore in Portland, helping to electrify industries, buildings and vehicles while reducing the use of coal- and gas-fired power plants. Hence the project’s name: Cascade Renewable Transmission.

“The only places you can site solar and wind at scale are, for the most part, east of the Cascades. But the demand, the need for the electricity, is in Portland and Seattle, on the west side,” says Corey Kupersmith, the New York–based renewable energy developer who cofounded Sun2o and dreamed up the cable scheme. And power lines that link east and west are filling up fast, he says.

Anticipating environmental concerns, the developers assert they will do little harm to the Columbia, employing high-pressure pumps that make underwater cable installation quick and not so dirty. Water jets would shoot down from a “hydroplow” towed along the riverbed, stirring open an 18-inch-wide trench in the sediment.

Environmental impacts, they argue, would likely be short-term and outweighed by environmental gains: reductions in pollution from natural gas, petroleum fuels and coal. That includes emissions of carbon dioxide and methane, two greenhouse gases that are supercharging Cascadia’s wildfires and heat waves and disrupting even the Columbia’s temperature and timing.

To Elaine Harvey, however, the Cascade Renewable Transmission pitch sounds like one more industrial enterprise in a stream of projects that have harmed her people. Such ventures decimated the Columbia River’s fisheries and fenced off and degraded the shrub-steppe grasslands that the Yakama and other tribes and bands ceded in an 1855 treaty with the United States.

A member of the Yakama’s Kah-milt-pa, or Rock Creek, Band, Harvey lives with the legacy of dams, aluminum production, wind farms, expanding solar plants and other development. Each has infringed on her people’s right to pursue traditional practices.

As Harvey and Kah-milt-pa Chief Bronsco Jim Jr. wrote earlier this year in the newsletter of Columbia Riverkeeper: “Ours is a living culture, and we are being cheated by progress. An unrelenting cultural extinction in the name of energy development.”

Power-system experts say the grid that sufficed in the fossil-fuel era must increase capacity if renewable electricity is to become the lifeblood of economies.

Wind blows and sunlight shines most reliably in places that are sparsely populated — areas with weak power lines. Stronger grids, in contrast, enable more power to travel between regions, so those areas can help each other out — precisely what Texas couldn’t do when a deep freeze brought the state to its knees in February and when heat strained its grid last month.

To explore the role of power transmission and the tradeoffs involved in grid expansion, InvestigateWest spoke with Kupersmith, Harvey and Lauren Goldberg, the legal and program director for Columbia Riverkeeper.

Corey Kupersmith: Renewable energy developer

A passion for diving exposed Corey Kupersmith to coral bleaching resulting from water pollution and global warming. An engineer by training and a banker by trade, Kupersmith cofounded New York City–based Sun2o five years ago as a business venture that honors his environmental values

Pursuing solar energy projects in sun-soaked eastern Oregon and Washington inspired him to propose the Cascade link project. Sun2o found plenty of landowners and rural communities eager to host solar panels. But it struggled to secure affordable space on power lines so it could send that energy to the utilities in greatest need of renewable energy.

Moving power west over the Cascades means getting access to the Bonneville Power Administration’s (BPA) regional network, the U.S. Northwest’s transmission backbone. That network is maxing out as a wave of renewable power projects plug in. “BPA has like 28 gigawatts of solar, wind and storage requests,” says Kupersmith. “That’s going to be pushing systems to their limits.”

And that was before Oregon passed one of North America’s most aggressive grid decarbonization plans.

The bill, which Gov. Kate Brown signed on July 27, requires Oregon’s investor-owned utilities to deliver 80 percent carbon-free power by 2030, compared to less than 50 percent today. It mandates 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2040 — five years ahead of deadlines set by Washington state and California.

Bonneville itself is in a tough spot. The federal entity is being financially stretched by rising costs to maintain aging dams and improve impacted salmon fisheries and decreasing revenues as customers defect to cheaper suppliers.

Hitting a transmission barrier inspired Kupersmith to propose the Cascade cables. He knew putting them in the riverbed was an option, because PowerBridge had installed two transmission lines in the Hudson River to ease power bottlenecks in New York City. And he saw a submerged cable as an end-run around opposition to overhead lines that has scuppered previous grid expansion efforts in Cascadia and frequently ties up projects across the continent.

Kupersmith’s partner at PowerBridge, Chris Hocker, calls overhead lines “hideously problematic,” noting that they can take a decade or more to build. In contrast, he and Kupersmith anticipate their Columbia cables would begin pumping electricity in just five years — lightning speed for new transmission.

Of course, that depends on government and community approval. And the partners recently began conversations with the four tribes that have treaty rights in the region, including the Yakama Nation and the Cowlitz Indian Tribe. Kupersmith says they had hoped to meet earlier but were delayed by the pandemic and a desire to conduct consultations in person.

Elaine Harvey: Kah-milt-pa activist

For Elaine Harvey, a power line in the Columbia would add to a pile of damaging energy developments over the decades. One of the most devastating was the 1957 completion of The Dalles Dam — one of 14 major dams on the Columbia’s main stem — and decimation of the world’s largest fishery.

The Dalles Dam energized the associated Big Eddy substation, where Kupersmith and his partners hope to plug into BPA’s regional grid, and which has its own painful associations for local tribes.

The Dalles Dam’s 200-foot-high barrier submerged the storied Celilo Falls, where daring dip netters once caught leaping salmon and steelhead. The dam also submerged a complex of villages nearby, which had been a gathering point for traders from tribes across the Northwest. Prior to the dam, it was North America’s oldest site of continuous human habitation.

Those historic insults and other losses remain fresh more than half a century later, as Indigenous communities grapple with a settler culture that often seems incapable of hearing their concerns.

Harvey sees that inability manifested in another proposed grid reinforcement project that she’s fighting, just upstream from The Dalles. The Goldendale Energy Storage Project would build a pair of 60-acre reservoirs, one alongside the river and one on a bluff above. By moving Columbia River water between the reservoirs, the project would store and discharge energy like a giant battery.

The project faces vocal opposition from the Yakama Nation, to whom the site is profoundly sacred. Yakama stories recall the bluffs as a haven during great floods in millennia past, and Harvey says her band still forages there for culturally important “first foods,” such as desert parsley.

They already have lost much access to foraging sites because wind farms have fenced off large areas. Only one landowner hosting a wind farm allows Harvey’s people to enter and gather traditional plants, she says.

Harvey asks whether the onslaught of development in the Columbia Gorge is necessary. She questions whom the projects are intended to benefit, noting with suspicion the express line running between BPA’s Big Eddy hub and Los Angeles.

The express line and others were built in the 1960s to help power California. In the future, excess solar power could flow north when the sun is up. But today, the lines’ primary use remains the shipment of hydropower from the Columbia River dams and British Columbia south to California.

Harvey wants to know where development will stop. “What is this going to lead to? Is this going to lead to wind (turbines) down the middle of the river? What’s down the line?”

Climate change also worries Harvey. A biologist by training, she knows warmer water represents a growing threat to the Columbia’s struggling fisheries.

Harvey thinks other solutions need to be considered. Gas-fired power plants can be equipped to capture the CO2 they produce. Smarter logging practices and coastal protections can boost the ability of inland forests and kelp forests to capture atmospheric CO2. Rooftop solar panels can generate power where it’s needed most.

Bottom line, says Harvey: “We already gave up enough.”

Lauren Goldberg: River defender and lawyer

For Lauren Goldberg, projects like the Cascade cables present an acute challenge. Goldberg, a 15-year veteran at Columbia Riverkeeper, sees fossil fuels and climate change as existential threats to the river and the communities that rely on it. This is a reason Riverkeeper has been a mainstay in the “Thin Green Line” movement that has blocked many efforts to push more coal, oil and liquefied natural gas down the rail lines transiting the Gorge.

And it’s why it advocates for clean energy production. “The Columbia River is already being impacted by the climate crisis, and the projections are dire,” says Goldberg.

Goldberg says a lot of green energy development has happened in the Columbia Basin, and she expects that will continue. But that does not mean every project that calls itself renewable and green gets a pass?

And even if submerged power cables are deemed important for energy transition, for Goldberg their carbon-cutting potential must outweigh their direct environmental impacts.

“Whether it’s renewable energy or fossil energy, we need to understand how a project is going to impact people that rely on the Columbia for salmon and for clean water,” says Goldberg.

Goldberg stresses that burying 100-mile-long power cables in the riverbed is a concept that Riverkeeper has yet to grapple with. Based on experience and preliminary research, Goldberg identifies several issues. One is the impact from stirring up sediment. She says that while the Columbia is “incredibly beautiful,” it’s by no means “pristine.”

Another potential impact mentioned by Goldberg could come from the electromagnetic fields generated by power cables. Research commissioned by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management looked at magnetic fields emanating from similar transmission cables laid across San Francisco Bay. Those cables helped reduce San Francisco’s dependence on gas-fired power plants.

The study found that the cables had some effects on migratory fish like salmon, which navigate partly by sensing Earth’s magnetic fields. For example, the cables increased the chance that salmon smolts would take a wrong turn that lengthened their journey to the ocean. But it detected no evidence that fish were harmed. Fish appeared to be just as successful at migrating through the bay after the cables were turned on.
___
This report is part of Getting to Zero, InvestigateWest’s yearlong reporting initiative on reducing carbon in the Cascadia region. InvestigateWest’s work is supported in part by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

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A planned upgrade to increase the capacity of the wastewater treatment plant in The Dalles will be designed and built using an alternative project delivery method that maximizes client input.

The city of The Dalles has hired general contractor Mortenson Construction and engineering firm Kennedy/Jenks Consultants to complete the $4.8 million project using progressive design-build methodology. Instead of seeking preliminary designs from firms vying for a project, cities and other public entities that opt for the progressive design-build method typically hire a team based solely on qualifications and past experience. This eliminates any design work that occurs without owner input, providing the opportunity for the client to be involved in the process from the earliest planning stages.

“In progressive (design-build), it’s really based on the customer and the culture of the organization,” said Thomas Paul, general manager of Mortenson’s environmental group.

When the Mortenson and Kennedy/Jenks team was shortlisted to design and build The Dalles wastewater treatment plant project, city officials invited the two firms to a four-hour interview with no agenda, he said. During the interview, Mortenson and Kennedy/Jenks staffers explored the city’s options for either updating or replacing its nearly 80-year-old wastewater treatment plant. This ultimately led to the team landing the job late last year.

“There really aren’t a lot of rules with progressive design-build,” Paul said. “You kind of take a bunch of ideas and throw them on a board.”

Through a process of brainstorming with the design-build team that’s continued since the firms were hired, city officials decided to go against the recommendation of a facilities master plan to replace the aging wastewater treatment plant with a new facility, said Dave Anderson, public works director for The Dalles. Plans to renovate a pump station to increase the amount of waste that can be pumped into the plant will result in significant amount of cost savings over replacing it, he said.

“We saw that the design-build process would allow the contractor to be involved early in the process,” Anderson said. “We also realized that the concepts that were presented in our facilities plan were concepts and they were just that, and allow for as much innovation as we can with our construction contractor. We are taking a step back from the facilities master plan and trying to identify all the ways we could do this.”

When the project team analyzed the city’s options for increasing the capacity of its wastewater treatment plant, the team realized the recommendation of the facilities plan to replace the facility didn’t make a lot of sense, especially from a cost perspective.

“We said, ‘What’s wrong with your current building and how can we reuse that asset?’” Paul said.

The project team recently wrapped up the “discover and explore phase” of the design process with four potential alternatives for updating the wastewater treatment plant with careful consideration of the estimated cost for each option, Anderson said.

“I’m really encouraged at this point,” he said. “It looks like we have the opportunity to save millions of dollars and still achieve our needs.”

Looking at ways to most cost-effectively complete a project is one of the biggest advantages of progressive design-build, Paul said.

“I think it’s a value analysis,” he said. “When you bring that to the table, it’s a huge cost advantage.”

Although the city of The Dalles has completed projects in the past using the design-build process, the wastewater treatment plant upgrade is the first to be done using the progressive method, Anderson said. He suggested the city give progressive design-build a try after learning about the concept at a wastewater plant design conference.

“Under a traditional delivery method, it’s possible we would have taken that (replacement) concept from the master plan,” Anderson said. “I think we’re providing some better value to us by looking at some other alternatives.”

Construction is scheduled to start this fall on upgrades to The Dalles’ wastewater treatment plant and be complete by fall 2016.

The Dalles wastewater treatment plant upgrade

Location: 105 Laughlin St., The Dalles

Cost: $4.8 million

Anticipated construction start date: Fall 2015

Anticipated construction completion date: Fall 2016

Owner: City of The Dalles

Engineer: Kennedy/Jenks Consultants

General contractor: Mortenson Construction

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The roar of Celilo Falls in Eastern Oregon could be heard from miles around before the sound was silenced by construction of The Dalles Dam in 1957.

For centuries, the falls now submerged under the Columbia River near Celilo Park east of The Dalles served as productive salmon fishing grounds and a much revered site for nearby Native American tribes. A park restoration project conceived by renowned designer Maya Lin is intended to remind visitors of this history.

Lin’s designs for the Celilo Park Confluence Project include a curved, wooden structure inspired by traditional Native American fishing platforms used at the site. The elevated walkway will overlook the now calm stretch of river where the basalt rock formation the falls once cascaded over still exists underwater.

“This was such a sacred space, and it was so powerful,” Lin said last week during a City Club of Portland talk. “The falls are still there. They’re just hidden from view.”

She spoke last week in Portland and Eugene about designing the Celilo Park project and other portions of Confluence, a series of six public art installations at historically significant points along the Columbia River system in Oregon and Washington.

When the $10.5 million Celilo Park restoration is completed in 2017, the project will be Lin’s final contribution to Confluence, a 12-year collaborative effort between Pacific Northwest tribes, civic groups, artists, architects and landscape architects. A recent $1 million donation from the Schnitzer family, $1.5 million from the state of Oregon and grants from various charitable organizations will help pay for the “Celilo Arc” elevated walkway, an interpretive pavilion with information about the site’s history, and park facility improvements, Confluence Executive Director Colin Fogarty said.

Currently, there are three interpretive signs at the Celilo Park rest area and picnic grounds operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers off of Interstate 84, Fogarty said. The signs mostly talk about the Lewis and Clark Expedition in the early 1800s and only briefly mention the site’s significance to Native American tribes, he said.

“This 10,000-year history of Native American culture and commerce (is discussed), but not enough,” he said.

The Confluence sites are spread out along a 438-mile stretch from the mouth of the Columbia River to the Hells Canyon area in Eastern Oregon. Each installation includes educational components with information about both the Lewis and Clark Expedition and Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest. The aim of the Celilo Park Confluence Project is to educate visitors about Celilo Falls and pay homage to the site’s importance to Native American tribes, Fogarty said.

“We want it to be as culturally sensitive as possible and we want it to be for them,” he said.

When Lin first conferred with tribal members about designing the various Confluence sites they expressed hesitancy about anything being built at Celilo Park.

“When we first started, we met with the tribes and we were told it was too painful a site,” she said.

After the success of Confluence installations at Cape Disappointment State Park on the Washington Coast and Sandy River Delta Park near Troutdale, the tribes returned to Lin to help tell the story of Celilo Falls. The elevated walkway arc will catalog the history of the Celilo site, beginning with Native Americans and concluding with the falls disappearing because of construction.

“This will be a journey – a kind of a journey and a memory,” Lin said.

The project acknowledges that although Celilo Falls no longer roars, it hasn’t been forgotten by the tribes, she said.

“Celilo Falls, I think it’s a symbol, but it’s not just a symbol,” she said. “It’s still one of the sacred places for the tribes. It’s still there, which I think is a fantastic fact that came out.”

Celilo Park Confluence Project

Location: Celilo Park, The Dalles

Estimated cost: $10.4 million

Anticipated construction completion date: 2017

Developer: Confluence

Architect: Maya Lin Studio

Landscape architect: GreenWorks

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When Interstate 84 was built, the road cut off The Dalles‘ downtown from its riverfront. The city for several years has had a high priority to reconnect its parts, and one of the projects is to create a three-acre park on a vacant lot. The Lewis and Clark Park and Festival Grounds will connect to a highway undercrossing.

“It really is one of the key elements in this strong desire to connect with the waterfront that the city has,” said project manager and KPFF principal Curt Vanderzanden. are managing the project.

The park includes paths and landscaping that will suit festivals and vendors, Vanderzanden said. A large lawn will add to the event space.

The one structure on the site is a combination building that will serve as a band shell, and provide restrooms, a picnic shelter and space for concessions. The building is designed by .

“It’s pretty much the portal for the park,” Good said. He added that the team decided to combine its building needs into one structure so that more green space would be left and materials would be used more efficiently.

Good said the building is “iconic.” He created a unique, foil design to route wind up and over the building.

“Winds are constantly blowing from west to east,” Good said. “It creates a nice wind shadow where the band shell and picnic shelters are.”

He hopes that the shape of the building also will help to shield the park from freeway noise nearby. He said the attractiveness of the park area and building may catch the eyes of drivers passing by.

“Hopefully they’ll be drawn to go downtown and explore The Dalles,” Good said. “The city’s architecture is rich; it’s an overlooked community.”

The park will include landscape elements to shield it both from the freeway and an adjacent railway; fast-growing elm trees and native plants will provide shade, a noise buffer and water management. Landscape architect and Greenworks principal Mike Faha contributed to this landscape design.

Other design team members include: Shannon & Wilson, geotechnical engineering; Reyes Engineering Inc., electrical design; Kittelson & Associates, lighting design; White Shield Inc., surveying; and Biella Lighting Design, lighting consultation. 

“On the Boards” is a weekly feature that spotlights local firms’ best design work. Submissions from architectural and engineering firms are encouraged. Please email ontheboards@djcorprod.wpengine.com or call 503-802-7240.

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Chuck Covert, owner of NAPA Auto Parts in The Dalles, was recently looking into relocating his business to a piece of property he has owned for years in the northeast area of the city. But then he was quoted $70,000 for System Development Charges on the proposed development, $60,000 of which was transportation related. That was too much for Covert.

“I understand we need SDCs, but I was more than surprised when I saw that number,” Covert said. “If the transportation charge was even a little more in line with the water and sewer charges I could swallow it, but I just paid a (low impact development) charge for a new traffic light and now I have to pay $60,000 more in transportation charges?”

SDCs are a funding tool used by municipalities to minimize the financial burden on taxpayers for adding public services resulting from new developments. Cities across the state collect one-time fees from each new development or change-of-use to help pay for public facilities and services associated with parks, transportation, water, wastewater and storm water.

The tool is often considered a vehicle to promote and accommodate growth, but some developers in The Dalles are claiming that exorbitant transportation SDCs are actually hindering growth and driving away potential businesses.

While the sewer and water SDCs are measured in a straightforward manner – by the gallon – transportation SDCs are trickier. Transportation SDCs are based on a formula that incorporates data collected on specific uses of the development by the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE).

Covert was charged $5,000 because an auto parts store would be put on the property and an additional $55,000 because the new store would be 13,000 square feet. A transportation SDC for a similar facility in Ashland, a city within the same population category (as designated by ITE), would cost about $41,000.

David Griffith, owner of Griffith Motors in The Dalles, encountered a similar situation. He was recently quoted $75,000 for the transportation SDC associated with developing a piece of property. He is conducting a traffic survey on the site – an alternative to using the ITE data under Oregon law – in order to dispute the charge.

The Dalles City Council is just now starting to hear grumblings about the SDCs, which became effective in 2008. Public hearings on the matter were poorly attended, and there was not a single objection at the Council meeting when the ordinance was passed. Development had been at a virtual standstill since the recession began.

“When we initially passed the ordinance we were thinking the commercial SDCs would relieve taxpayers of the financial burden associated with big out-of-town businesses moving to town, like Shari’s Restaurant and Walmart,” said James Wilcox, mayor of The Dalles and a longtime real estate agent. “But what we have found out over time is that it is really hurting local businesses and local developers.”

City manager Nolan Young noted that he hasn’t received a single complaint from outside businesses that have moved in since the SDCs were implemented. Large national retailers and restaurants are used to dealing with these types of city charges, he said.

While some local developers have complained about the commercial SDCs, there seems to be no contention about the residential SDCs. Wilcox acknowledged that his expertise is in residential real estate, so he didn’t have a perspective on how high SDCs should be for commercial developments. SDCs run about $6,000 for a new single-family residence in The Dalles, compared to about $17,000 in Portland.

“When the council passed these they were looking at the residential end of it,” said Bob McFadden, a real estate agent and port commissioner in The Dalles. “They drew their initial residential figures back to the current figures because they thought they were too high. But they didn’t have any new commercial developments to look at, so they left those SDCs alone.

“My argument is that if a developer or business owner decides not to build because of these charges, not only will the city lose those SDCs, (but) the residents will lose the jobs and the money that the development would bring in.”

Other cities are being proactive. Roseburg City Council, for example, recently cut all 2010 transportation related charges by 75 percent to spur growth. The city of Molalla took an even more drastic approach, waiving all building-development fees for 2010.

“The bottom line is that we made this decision in a vacuum with no supporting evidence and not much public input,” Wilcox said. “Now that people are starting to encounter these problems, it is time to revisit it.

“SDCs are meant to accommodate growth. They are not meant to be the hammer that stops growth.”

The Dalles City Council will be looking at the matter at the next council meeting, on Monday. Then they will decide whether to expedite the process and amend the ordinance over the next month, or take a longer approach and offer some public forums.

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