Battle of Bull Run ends: Work on water filtration plant resumes

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Any day now, construction is set to restart at Bull Run Filtration Project.

The $2.134 billion Portland Water Bureau project was stopped cold in February after a Jan. 22 ruling by Oregon’s Land Use Board of Appeals. 

The shutdown is a showcase of a state regulatory and land use process that adds months and years of costly delays. It’s a process in which complaints from neighbors about construction dust can halt a government construction project that was years in the making, a project that is itself mandated by environmental laws and concerns. 

At the time of the stoppage, a mostly union workforce of 466 workers and 16 contractors was working to contruct the new water filtration plant on City of Portland property in a rural area south of Oxbow Regional Park. Not only that, but the project was in its ramp up phase, and several hundred more workers were slated to begin work. The halt came at a challenging time for local union construction workers. After a years-long historic boom in construction locally, a slowdown is lengthening out-of-work lists at local union halls. That means Bull Run’s closure likely resulted in months without wages for many union workers — not just dispatch to other construction jobs.

The project, budgeted at $2.134 billion, includes filtration facilities, pipelines, and improved corrosion control. 

The City of Portland is trying to complete it by September 30, 2027 to meet a deadline imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or else it could face financial penalties. 

Portland has some of the cleanest water in the United States, gravity fed from the Bull Run Watershed in a protected area of the Mt. Hood National Forest. But EPA said the water must be treated to remove the microorganism Cryptosporidium. Cryptosporidium, which can live in water, food, or soil, can cause 1 to 2 weeks of watery diarrhea. 

There have been no known cases of illness from cryptosporidium in water supplies anywhere in the United States, but because the bacteria was detected in Portland’s water supply, under the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974, the EPA is mandating that the Portland Water Bureau treat the water.

The bureau could have opted for an inexpensive facility using ultraviolet light, but instead decided to invest in resilience — a much more expensive plant that would also protect water supplies in the event of wildfires, landslides, and flooding. If wildfire comes to the watershed, tree loss could lead to greater sediment in the water. That’s not hypothetical: In February 1996, after several decades of the U.S. Forest Service allowing clearcuts in the watershed, heavy rains struck, sending untold quantities of eroded soil and other watershed debris into the City of Portland’s two storage reservoirs, leading to shutdown and water from wells near the airport. A federal law passed in response later that year prohibits all logging in the Bull Run. But in 2023, the Camp Creek Fire burned more than 2,000 acres in the 65,000-acre Bull Run Watershed. That’s expected to lead to some soil erosion. 

When construction began in June 2024, reaction from neighbors was immediate and overwhelmingly negative. “Help Stop Filtration Plant” signs went up at houses, farms, and nurseries in the area. And a communty planning organization representing households and businesses in the area filed an appeal to Oregon’s Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA). The Oregon Association of Nurseries said the City should have chosen Powell Butte in Gresham, not a parcel that’s next to several nurseries in rural Eastern Multnomah County. 

Opponents also second-guessed the decision to go big. Rural residents aren’t the only ones concerned about Portland’s expensive water, but that had nothing to do with the technicalities of land use law.

The appeal made many technical arguments, and one of them landed. LUBA ruled that Multnomah County, which approved the land use permit, needed to go back and further define “natural resources” and then apply that refined definition to review whether the project showed it meets a natural resources approval criterion. 

On April 15, Multnomah County held a public hearing over whether the project would adversely affect natural resources. Union leaders testified in favor of resuming construction. Neighbors testified against.

The immediate area is far from pristine. It’s a combination of ranch houses and working nurseries, with trucks and machinery parked along the road.

The six-month delay means work that was scheduled to be done in the dry season will now have to take place in the rainy months, potentially causing increased cost for additional work.

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