Many people just assume that Portland has so much water that it never rationed or conserved. Surprisingly, there has been years when conservation measures were enacted and even years when water was rationed.
Portlanders have an affair with a large, woodsy chunk of 102 square miles of land near Mount Hood. It's called Bull Run and it the main water supply for Portland and surrounding communities. The Bull Run system taps two reservoirs near Mount Hood, then sends the water by gravity to over 900,000 city and suburban customers with doses of chlorine and ammonia along the way. A groundwater system with 22 available wells in three aquifers provides a back-up source of water. Bull Run is owned by the City of Portland.
The name "Bull Run" comes from 1850s folklore. Legend has it that a herd of cattle being driving near the Cascade Mountains broke fee and managed to thrive in the wilderness, only appearing now and then to sip from Bull Run.
Here are the numbers:
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80 to 180 inches of rain each year in the Bull Run area.
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21 billion gallons stored in Bull Run Lake and behind two dams.
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As much as 200 million gallons each day piped to Portland and surrounding communities.
From Forest to Faucet
The water is stored in three above-ground reservoirs sites in the city: Mt. Tabor, Washington Park, and Powell Butte. The Mt. Tabor and Washington Park reservoirs are open. Mt. Tabor has Reservoirs 1, 5, and 6. Washington Parks reservoirs are numbered Reservoir 3 and Reservoir 4. In addition to the five above-ground reservoirs, the system has one underground reservoir and 62 tanks. This is sufficient to store about three days worth of drinking water.
As the waters flow from 'Forest to Faucet', for many customers there is at least one more stop before water gets to the customer: a water storage tank. Storage tanks are a necessity for a variety of reasons. Water storage tanks have two primary functions: Water tanks guarantee that a particular neighborhood in a service area will have adequate water pressures during all times of day, no matter what the season. Elevating water in tanks improves pressure throughout the system. Portland has sixty-four tanks. They are constructed either of concrete or steel. The concrete tanks hold from sixty thousand gallons to four million gallons of water. (The transmission tanks at Powell Butte are bigger.) The balance of the other tanks are steel with either riveted, or welded construction that hold from thirty thousand gallons to over five million gallons of water. Some of the tanks are above ground, others are either buried underground or partially buried.
History
 The first effort at a municipal water supply came in the late 1850s with the private Pioneer Water Works.
According to E. Kimbark MacColl's Merchants, Money and Power, the Portland Establishment 1814-1913 (The Georgian Press, 1988), that operation gave way to merchants Herman Leonard and John Green, founders in January 1859 of the Portland Gas Light Co., the third of its kind on the West Coast. In 1862, Leonard and Green bought Pioneer Water for $5,400 and spent $50,000 expanding it into the Portland Water Company.
In 1865 Leonard and Green were leading investors in the Oregon Iron Co. in Oswego, with merchant bankers William S. Ladd and Henry Failing as lesser partners. Over the next 20 years, the foundry struggled to stay in operation and morphed into Oregon Iron & Steel Co., while Portland gradually outgrew its private water supplies, mainly wells and the increasingly polluted Willamette River.
In 1885 the major player on the local political scene was Joseph Simon, a Republican lawyer characterized by detractors as "The Boss." Simon held little sway over the Democratically controlled City Council, but his influence over the Republican Legislature was virtually complete.
Water Board
He directed state lawmakers and Republican Gov. Zenas Moody in creating two boards independent of the Portland council, the Board of Police Commissioners and the Water Committee. Both were appointed by the governor and packed with Simon cronies.
On the Water Board, as it was known, were what MacColl calls "15 of the city's most prominent civic leaders − the cream of the Portland Establishment," including Ladd, Failing, Henry W. Corbett, Simeon Reed and Frank Dekum.
Despite its pedigree, the Water Board was understandably held in low esteem by the City Council, which voted 6-1 to designate it as the "Oligarchy of 15." An appeal to the Legislature to restore the waterworks to city government failed. A legal challenge to the board was rejected by the Oregon Supreme Court.
The board was authorized to sell $700,000 in tax-free bonds to set up a municipal water system. They sold quickly, and, among eager buyers were Ladd & Tilton Bank, $200,000, and First National Bank, of which Failing was president, $170,000.
The board paid Green and Leonard $478,000 for Portland Water Co. and Ladd & Tilton Bank $150,000 for the Crystal Springs Water Co. in Southeast Portland.
Ladd, the chief influence on the board − its meetings were always held in his office − led a move to spend another $500,000 to tap Bull Run for the city. Reed objected publicly on grounds of cost and claimed the existing water supply was just fine.
Behind-the-scenes scuttlebutt indicated Reed was miffed because Ladd had maneuvered him out of the presidency of Oregon Iron & Steel Co. Reed's objection dissolved when, lo and behold, he got his old job back and Oregon Iron & Steel got an $84,872 contract for 1,997 tons of water pipe, the first of many. In 1889, the board bought about four square miles of land in the Bull Run watershed. Most of the surrounding land was owned by the federal government.
The project ran into trouble when Gov. Sylvester Pennoyer, of the Democrat People's Party, vetoed one measure to extend the board's tax-free bonding capacity by $500,000 and then another. It wasn't until 1891 that the board managed to push through $2.5 million in taxable bonds.
Bull Run Watershed Declared National Forest Reserve by President Harrison
On June 17, 1892, President Benjamin Harrison, at Portland's behest, declared the entire 102-square-mile Bull Run watershed a national forest reserve.
In January 1895, the tap was officially turned, and Bull Run water flowed into the city for the first time. Pennoyer, whose negativity moved Judge Matthew Deady privately to grumble that he should be more rightly named "Sylpester Annoyer," gave it a governmental taste test.
According to MacColl, Pennoyer "allowed that it had neither the body nor flavor of the Willamette."
Despite the board's duplicity, Portland, at 75 cents per residential water customer per month, "would have the second-lowest rates in the nation," says MacColl, "only slightly more than those in Niagara Falls, New York." Today, Portland's water and sewer rates are among the highest in the nation.
Decrease in Typhoid Fever
Within two years "the City's health officer documented a phenomenal decrease in the number of cases of typhoid fever and the lowest death rate on record at the time," according to the city Bureau of Water Works' Web site.
U.S. Forest Service Forced to Stop Logging at Bull Run
In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt signed a "Trespass Act" further restricting access. Between 1948 and 1993 the U.S. Forest Service allowed about 25 percent of the watershed's timber to be logged. That may or may not have caused some later turbidity in the reservoirs, but it most certainly stirred consternation in the minds of Portland pure-water buffs.
Lawsuits and federal legislation have since ordained the watershed be restored and reserved exclusively for production of its No. 1 product: aqua pura.
Removing Roads to Keep Portland's Water Source Safe
In 2008, the Forest Service started dismantling miles of old logging roads and reshaping the slopes of Bull Run. The deteriorating roads, built atop thousands of dump-truck loads of unstable fill, are environmental time bombs that could slump and collapse. That would send dirt cascading into crystalline Bull Run reservoirs that provide Portland some of the purest drinking water in the country. If that happened, the Portland Water Bureau would have to switch temporarily to other water sources or undertake more expensive treatment.
For years the Forest Service and the Water Bureau were at odds over logging in the watershed. Now they have a partnership. The Water Bureau will maintain some roads for access to its water system and for firefighting. The Forest Service will take out the rest.
The agency has "decommissioned" and actively removed 45 miles of road within the 65,500 acres that drain into Portland's water supply. Now crews are taking out the final 18 miles of road in the critical area. The work is funded with a slice of the $40 million that Congress allocated to deal with deteriorating roads in national forests.
That money also is paying for removal of 245 old rusting culverts that forest officials worry could become blocked in storms and cause roads to wash out. The Forest Service has shut down another 78 miles of road that pose no erosion risks so nature can reclaim them. The agency terms that work "passive decommissioning."
All told, the work has made a serious dent in the 346 miles of road that once criss-crossed the Bull Run. Environmental groups say that's a good start, but that much more work remains.
Source for some of the above is from an article in The Oregonian (July 21, 2002) by John Terry.
EPA: More Treatment and Cover the Reservoirs
Raw water quality is exceptional − the watershed is reserved solely for producing drinking water and federal laws restrict human entry. In Portland, water from the Bull Run watershed rolls in, pushed by gravity. The water is treated at Headworks with chlorine, then with ammonia and sodium hydroxide at the Lusted Hill treatment facility. At that point it's officially considered treated water. As the water leaves Lusted Hill, some may spin off into homes in Rockwood or Gresham, but most goes to Portland. The water then gets extra chlorine at two points, after it leaves Reservoir 6 in Mt. Tabor and after it leaves Reservoir 4 in Washington Park.
To check on all that water, there are 160 sampling stations throughout the system.
Current regulations allow an exemption to filtration for this water supply. Since late 2005, the EPA and the City of Portland have been engaged in a lawsuit over the filtration issue and covering the water reservoirs in the city. The City of Portland ’s challenge to the federal Long Term 2 Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule (LT2). Portland’s petition had challenged two requirements of the rule:
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One would force the city to provide additional treatment of its Bull Run drinking water source to either eliminate or inactivate the microbial pathogen, Cryptosporidium.
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The second would require that the city either cover its open finished drinking water reservoirs at Mt. Tabor and Washington Parks, provide treatment for Cryptosporidium at the outlets of the reservoirs, or take the reservoirs out of service.
In early November, 2007, in a unanimous decision, the three-judge panel of the Washington, DC District Court of Appeals issued a decision in the City of Portland ’s challenge to the federal Long Term 2 Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule (LT2). The Court rejected Portland ’s challenge to the rule. The City of Portland's Web site stated the following: “The city will evaluate its options for maintaining compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act based on the decision,” said Water Bureau Administrator David Shaff, “Our immediate responsibility is to look at the options available to us and to include the community in analyzing and discussing the City’s options.”
November 2009: E. coli Shuts Down Reservoir 3 in Washington Park
 Testing from Washington Park's Reservoir 3 showed a positive result November 26, 2009, for E. coli. A second test confirmed that result November 28. It was six hours later before the public was notified via the news media, with the boil-water alert affecting 50,000 water bureau customers. The next day, the city lifted the order.
The city relied on traditional and social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, to get the word out. The Portland Police Bureau scratched a program it had for 10 years to notify water customers by calling them. Police Chief Rosie Sizer canceled the contract with Firstcall Network to save $49,245 in the 2009 year budget. The city had used the call-out system dozens of times in the past decade to warn residents about bank robberies, missing children and hazardous material spills.
Officials are considering ways to improve the alert system. They said that one way the water bureau could do better is to take reservoirs offline at the first sign of contamination, rather than waiting for a second test. Water bureau workers will eventually be able to push a button in the Interstate Avenue control building to isolate any part of the system if needed.
On December 16, The Oregonian reported that a sea gull probably generated the E. coli. The city didn't answer the most pressing questions: What happened, and how do we prevent it from happening again, especially when birds fly over the city's open reservoirs all the time? The Portland Water bureau will continue searching, but without a carcass, it's hard to pinpoint the cause. The security cameras picked up nothing unusual at Reservoir No. 3 in Washington Park, and the liner turned out clean.
Controversy over the Water Bureau Actions
The Northwest Examiner, in their January 2010 edition, reported on the controversy about whether the Portland Water Bureau's “boil water” alert in November was necessary. Here is a quote from the article:
Westsiders were supposedly exposed to E. coli contamination for two days before the alert went out, and the water they were told to not drink was never a health hazard. Some activists question the Portland Water Bureau’s motivations and consider its conclusion that the culprit may have been a bird, perhaps a seagull, more a matter of public manipulation than science. Behind it all is the suspicion that the bureau is using every circumstance to sell the city on the idea that Portland’s open reservoirs must be covered, at great expense and to the great benefit of the global infrastructure firm Montgomery Watson Harza, which has been the bureau’s main source of knowledge for years. The Water Bureau is doing everything it can to silence this kind of talk.
Allan Classen, the publisher of the Examiner, asked bureau Administrator David Shaff to comment on critical statements by Scott Fernandez, a microbiologist who served on the Portland Utility Review Board for eight years until 2008 (the Water Bureau did not renew his term on the board). Here is another quote from the story:
Shaff dispensed with details and launched immediately into a slanderous diatribe unbecoming of a public official. “He doesn’t know diddly — he’s not a chemist,” said Shaff, who had earlier admitted that he himself was unable to explain the chlorination process at Reservoir 3 in Washington Park because he likewise was no chemist. “Scott’s not a water-quality expert,” Shaff continued. “Nobody would recognize Scott as an expert on anything.” Asked about Fernandez’s degree in microbiology, Shaff said, “I’m sure he does have a degree in microbiology. "So what, I'm a lawyer."
Fernandez maintains that open reservoirs are not the problem. He thinks the plastic liner at reservoirs has workmanship problems, and the metal grating at the south end of the reservoir acts as a direct conduit for vector contamination of the water and need need to be addressed and removed immediately. He says that, "Covering the reservoirs does not protect us from E. coli or other contaminants. Construction and pipe breaks are recognized as the greatest source of contamination in the drinking water distribution system. Small animals such as birds or rodents can find their way into any covered reservoir through the pressure-equalizing vents, thus contaminating drinking water.” Fernandez contends that covering reservoirs may actually reduce safety and impair water quality.
EPA Issues Final Word in January 2010: Cover the Reservoirs
The Oregonian reported in its January 14, 2010, edition that the federal government has given Portland its final word: There’s no exception to a rule requiring Portland to replace its open drinking water reservoirs. The word came in a letter to Commissioner Randy Leonard, who oversees the Water Bureau, from Peter S. Silva, assistant administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
It appears to put an end to a long struggle between Portland and the federal agency over the rule, aimed at controlling the parasite cryptosporidium and other contaminants in drinking water. The rule also requires treatment of the city’s Bull Run water supply. The city, which contends that its water supply is safe, continues to seek guidance on how to avoid building the treatment plant.
Silva’s letter says the EPA found that uncovered finished water reservoirs like those in Portland “were subject to contamination from many sources including birds, animals, humans. algae, insects, and airborne deposition.”
In November, 2009, Leonard asked the EPA for guidance, citing two potential variances included in the Safe Drinking Water Act. In his reply, Silva said neither variance applies to the city’s open reservoirs.
One of the variances applies only to treatment of the source water, Silva said. The other variance applies if there’s an alternative treatment that is at least as effective as the technique specified in the rule. During development of the rule, the EPA considered allowing cities to adopt a plan to reduce the risk as an alternative to a covering the reservoirs, but the agency did not include the alternative in the final rule.
The bureau plans to build underground tanks at Powell Butte and Kelly Butte to replace the Mt. Tabor reservoirs, and a plan to build a covered underground tank beneath Reservoir 3 in Washington Park − Reservoir 4 would most likely serve as a backup. The city must have the projects completed by April 1, 2014.
January 2011: Update on Ruling Portland tested 750 samples of Bull Run water in 2010 for the potentially lethal parasite cryptosporidium, sampling 3,500 gallons over 12 months from the reservoirs' intakes and potential hot spots in their tributaries. It found a a total of zero. The result is the city's strongest argument yet against an Environmental Protection Agency requirement that it build a $100 million treatment plant by 2014 to kill the chlorine-resistant parasite in the name of public health. Portland's Water Bureau will use the data − the most rigorous testing for cryptosporidium in the nation, the bureau says − to request a variance from the federal rule later this year. In a last ditch effort, Portland will try to build a case that the untreated Bull Run water actually contains less of the parasite than the federal rule estimates for water treated under the new standard − 0.75 parasites per 10,000 liters of drinking water.
Reservoirs and Parks
Now that that the reservoirs aren’t needed for drinking water storage, they could be used for any number of things. One possibility is reviving an old design to remake the Mt. Tabor reservoirs into wetlands, waterfalls and even a wading pool. They would make good skating ponds.
In 2002, Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who oversaw the Water Bureau at the time, proposed covering the reservoirs as an anti-terrorism measure. The Seattle-based landscape architecture firm, Gustafson Guthrie Nichol, won a contest to redesign the reservoirs as a connected series of water features. Gustafson Guthrie Nichol designed landscapes for Chicago's Millennium Park, Boston's Big Dig freeway capping project and a memorial to Princess Diana in London.
In its design for the reservoirs at Mt. Tabor, Reservoir 1 would become a wetland, draining into a series of hillside gardens. Reservoir 5 at would become a reflecting pool. Southeast 60th Avenue would extend, via a tunnel, beneath the water in former Reservoir 6, becoming a new gateway to the park.
The reservoirs on Mt. Tabor and Washington Park were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004, which means any changes would bring a public hearing before the city design review commission.
Portland Water/Sewer Rates Among Highest in the Nation
In March of 2011, the Portland City Council began questioning the bureau's plans to raise rates by 13.9 percent by July, despite inflationary increases of less than 4 percent. Over the next five years, the cumulative rate increase is expected to be 85 percent.
Quarterly bills for a typical residential customer would rise from $74 now to $84 come July. By mid-2015, they're projected to hit $137 a quarter, likely to push Portland's water bills significantly above the average for the 50 largest U.S. cities. Adding in projected sewer charges, already among the nation's highest, Portland's combined water and sewer bill would total $346 a quarter in five years.
About 25 percent of the water rate increase for next year is tied to the Environmental Protection Agency's mandate that Portland deal with cryptosporidium, a chlorine-resistant parasite that all evidence indicates is awfully scarce around here. Unless the bureau can get a variance, the city will have to build a $100 million ultraviolet treatment plant to kill the microbe at its Bull Run storage reservoirs near Mount Hood. The city is also set to spend up to $400 million to replace five open-air drinking water reservoirs at Mount Tabor and Washington parks with covered storage to guard against cryptosporidium.
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