THE UTILITY ISSUE: Wastewater Treatment & MINET
By Anne Scheck
An old saying goes that if at first you don’t succeed, try again. And that’s just what the city is doing with a plan to upgrade the municipal wastewater-and-sewer system near downtown, the Riverview Pump Station. But when the city solicited bids for the engineering work last year, the proposals all came back with price tags of more than $1 million – a cost deemed just too high.
The second time around, things look different. The city plans on beginning construction as soon as a new bid is selected. “This will add capacity and redundancy to the pump station,” stated Tom Pessemier, the new city manager. That means not only will the pump station work under higher-volume conditions, but back-up equipment will help keep flow running smoothly, even if there are breakdowns. “I think we have the discharge situation well in hand with the improvements expected to be under contract soon,” Mr. Pessemier said.
As these infrastructure improvements roll out, Independence is embarking on plans it laid years ago, when the “Southwest Independence Concept Plan” was approved. That plan includes approximately 270 acres at the southwest corner of Independence – land brought into the city’s urban growth boundary in 2008. The goal: More residential housing.
But along with a fairly jubilant open house that the city held on the concept plan a decade ago – complete with splashy graphics and maps – was a seemingly more somber advisory. The city needed additional water-and-sewer facilities. Now that is an even more pressing need, as a hotel heads for completion at the downtown riverfront section, Independence Landing – apartments and townhomes are scheduled to break ground there soon, too.
The first steps will include the additional pump station, as well as upgrades to its existing ones. That seems to have satisfied the DEQ so far,which had been citing the city off and on for non-compliance issues over the past few years, due largely to periodic discharges into the Willamette River.
The lending agreement with the DEQ for nearly $6 million remains unchanged. But though the terms of the loan are unlikely to change, the city needs to submit a "nuts-and-bolts" plan for recycling, noted Tim McFetridge PE, senior environmental engineer for the DEQ, who oversees the state's western region. The DEQ requires all substantial wastewater-and-sewer treatment changes to go through a review as a part of the DEQ lending process.
“As far as sanitary sewer discharge goes, the City has been working closely with the DEQ and the state on short, medium, and long-term plans,” Mr. Pessemier said. The short-term solution is to better manage the treatment plant in the summer, which proved effective in preventing any discharge during the summer months this year, he said.
In its pre-design report to DEQ, Independence laid out plans to refurbish four pump stations for its sewerage system and construct a new lagoon. The plans also include an irrigation pump for dispensing treated waste-water to surrounding fields. The irrigation facility will be built to "treat waste-water at a higher level" than is currently being done, so that it’s adequately cleansed for use on farm fields.
That last project “will be out to bid in the very near future and will eliminate any discharges for many years to come,” according to Mr. Pessemier. Almost immediately after funding was secured from the DEQ, “we began design of the wastewater effluent irrigation project,” explained Kie Cottam, public works director for the city. “We have already had the first review of the plans at the city level and expect DEQ review and approval when they are complete.”
“The City has worked closely with DEQ on the plans,” said City Manager Pessemier. “The improvements from the loan will resolve the concerns that the DEQ has expressed for many years to come.”
As the city embarks on its program for enhancing capacity to the water-and-sewer system, other infrastructure needs also loom ahead.
A street census, which was conducted by an engineering firm a few years ago, has expired – meaning that the precision in the report was mandated for a particular time period, and it can no longer be applied as an engineering design. However, when asked about this expiration last year, Shawn Irvine, the city’s economic development director, suggested that the findings can help prioritize which streets need attention first, as the city begins to address those issues.
Another lingering concern has been the city’s Transportation System Plan (TSP), which is now a dozen years old and, in the words of several city staff, “out of date.” With the construction of Independence Landing, significant parking and traffic increases are predicted. Asked about the TSP at the last city council meeting, Mr. Pessemier said it will be moving ahead. A grant has provided most of the funding.
An old saying goes that if at first you don’t succeed, try again. And that’s just what the city is doing with a plan to upgrade the municipal wastewater-and-sewer system near downtown, the Riverview Pump Station. But when the city solicited bids for the engineering work last year, the proposals all came back with price tags of more than $1 million – a cost deemed just too high.
The second time around, things look different. The city plans on beginning construction as soon as a new bid is selected. “This will add capacity and redundancy to the pump station,” stated Tom Pessemier, the new city manager. That means not only will the pump station work under higher-volume conditions, but back-up equipment will help keep flow running smoothly, even if there are breakdowns. “I think we have the discharge situation well in hand with the improvements expected to be under contract soon,” Mr. Pessemier said.
As these infrastructure improvements roll out, Independence is embarking on plans it laid years ago, when the “Southwest Independence Concept Plan” was approved. That plan includes approximately 270 acres at the southwest corner of Independence – land brought into the city’s urban growth boundary in 2008. The goal: More residential housing.
But along with a fairly jubilant open house that the city held on the concept plan a decade ago – complete with splashy graphics and maps – was a seemingly more somber advisory. The city needed additional water-and-sewer facilities. Now that is an even more pressing need, as a hotel heads for completion at the downtown riverfront section, Independence Landing – apartments and townhomes are scheduled to break ground there soon, too.
The first steps will include the additional pump station, as well as upgrades to its existing ones. That seems to have satisfied the DEQ so far,which had been citing the city off and on for non-compliance issues over the past few years, due largely to periodic discharges into the Willamette River.
The lending agreement with the DEQ for nearly $6 million remains unchanged. But though the terms of the loan are unlikely to change, the city needs to submit a "nuts-and-bolts" plan for recycling, noted Tim McFetridge PE, senior environmental engineer for the DEQ, who oversees the state's western region. The DEQ requires all substantial wastewater-and-sewer treatment changes to go through a review as a part of the DEQ lending process.
“As far as sanitary sewer discharge goes, the City has been working closely with the DEQ and the state on short, medium, and long-term plans,” Mr. Pessemier said. The short-term solution is to better manage the treatment plant in the summer, which proved effective in preventing any discharge during the summer months this year, he said.
In its pre-design report to DEQ, Independence laid out plans to refurbish four pump stations for its sewerage system and construct a new lagoon. The plans also include an irrigation pump for dispensing treated waste-water to surrounding fields. The irrigation facility will be built to "treat waste-water at a higher level" than is currently being done, so that it’s adequately cleansed for use on farm fields.
That last project “will be out to bid in the very near future and will eliminate any discharges for many years to come,” according to Mr. Pessemier. Almost immediately after funding was secured from the DEQ, “we began design of the wastewater effluent irrigation project,” explained Kie Cottam, public works director for the city. “We have already had the first review of the plans at the city level and expect DEQ review and approval when they are complete.”
“The City has worked closely with DEQ on the plans,” said City Manager Pessemier. “The improvements from the loan will resolve the concerns that the DEQ has expressed for many years to come.”
As the city embarks on its program for enhancing capacity to the water-and-sewer system, other infrastructure needs also loom ahead.
A street census, which was conducted by an engineering firm a few years ago, has expired – meaning that the precision in the report was mandated for a particular time period, and it can no longer be applied as an engineering design. However, when asked about this expiration last year, Shawn Irvine, the city’s economic development director, suggested that the findings can help prioritize which streets need attention first, as the city begins to address those issues.
Another lingering concern has been the city’s Transportation System Plan (TSP), which is now a dozen years old and, in the words of several city staff, “out of date.” With the construction of Independence Landing, significant parking and traffic increases are predicted. Asked about the TSP at the last city council meeting, Mr. Pessemier said it will be moving ahead. A grant has provided most of the funding.
MINET Technology Update
The financial cost of equipping the city’s municipal broadband, MINET, with needed upgrades and the way in which that revenue is generated, will be a subject of future MINET board meetings, according to MINET’s general manager Don Patten.
The necessary steps to “refresh and escalate” the technology and the “associated financials” necessary will be reviewed and considered by the board and members of the finance committee, he said.
The discussion of MINET’s concerns about the long-term integrity of MINET systems, which operated on an earlier generation of technology, has been done over past months, according to a posting by the company on its website following outages in early December.
“At MINET some parts of the system are over 10 years old. And while those parts are not relics, since MINET systems are serviced and tested regularly, it is nonetheless difficult for older equipment to keep pace with technology,” stated the company announcement.
In some ways, MINET has been a victim of its own success, one board member suggested. It nearly doubled its client base over five years, reaching a “remarkable” customer-penetration rate of about 80%. But that put a strain on the aging system, company officials confirmed. Higher-level technology appears to be a critical need.
Since MINET was formed, Independence, along with its co-founder Monmouth, has taken out about $27 million in loans on behalf of the fiber optic company, anticipating that MINET would generate enough revenue to cover both operating costs and the loan payments. Recently, it had been paying significantly more toward the debt, though Independence has continued to pay the lion’s share of its obligation to the debt.
In 2018, year-end bonuses were given to MINET employees, a board action, to reward the work staff had done over the last few years and, specifically, to recognize them for bringing the Dallas opportunity to fruition. The “Dallas Opportunity” refers to the expansion by MINET into that city through a new corporate partner, AFO, which is operating Willamette Valley Fiber, the company that will serve Dallas.
Options for expansion are an important piece of the financial viability: MINET is a for-profit enterprise of the cities, and the cities are sole investors, Mr. Patten said.
Although Oregon regards telecommunications companies under the auspices of the public utility commission, Mr. Patten said his own definition differs. He defines a utility as a “monopolistic or minimally competitive operational environment.” In contrast, MINET competes daily and directly with companies ranging from CenturyLink to Charter/Spectrum, among others.
The necessary steps to “refresh and escalate” the technology and the “associated financials” necessary will be reviewed and considered by the board and members of the finance committee, he said.
The discussion of MINET’s concerns about the long-term integrity of MINET systems, which operated on an earlier generation of technology, has been done over past months, according to a posting by the company on its website following outages in early December.
“At MINET some parts of the system are over 10 years old. And while those parts are not relics, since MINET systems are serviced and tested regularly, it is nonetheless difficult for older equipment to keep pace with technology,” stated the company announcement.
In some ways, MINET has been a victim of its own success, one board member suggested. It nearly doubled its client base over five years, reaching a “remarkable” customer-penetration rate of about 80%. But that put a strain on the aging system, company officials confirmed. Higher-level technology appears to be a critical need.
Since MINET was formed, Independence, along with its co-founder Monmouth, has taken out about $27 million in loans on behalf of the fiber optic company, anticipating that MINET would generate enough revenue to cover both operating costs and the loan payments. Recently, it had been paying significantly more toward the debt, though Independence has continued to pay the lion’s share of its obligation to the debt.
In 2018, year-end bonuses were given to MINET employees, a board action, to reward the work staff had done over the last few years and, specifically, to recognize them for bringing the Dallas opportunity to fruition. The “Dallas Opportunity” refers to the expansion by MINET into that city through a new corporate partner, AFO, which is operating Willamette Valley Fiber, the company that will serve Dallas.
Options for expansion are an important piece of the financial viability: MINET is a for-profit enterprise of the cities, and the cities are sole investors, Mr. Patten said.
Although Oregon regards telecommunications companies under the auspices of the public utility commission, Mr. Patten said his own definition differs. He defines a utility as a “monopolistic or minimally competitive operational environment.” In contrast, MINET competes daily and directly with companies ranging from CenturyLink to Charter/Spectrum, among others.
The CIVICS LESSON: The Kicker Will Kick In But The Hole Stays
When it comes to state taxes, “things really do look different in Oregon.” That’s the view of Lane Shetterly, a longtime lawyer in Polk County and the recent facilitator of a sharply divided panel on Oregon taxation, held by Salem City Club. However, it was Moderator Shetterly, of Dallas, who may have given the discussion its most memorable moment by pointing out that the $23.6 billion state budget is only 93% funded by Oregon’s comparatively high income tax – with an anticipated $630 million shortfall after paying for education, human services and public safety. Yet a rebate of nearly $700 million is expected to be returned to taxpayers, thanks to a booming economy that means the actual revenue for the state will exceed the economic forecast by at least two percent. In this situation, the rebate – commonly called "kicker" – is given back to individual taxpayers in the form of a tax credit. In one fell swoop, allocating this kicker to the state would wipe out the budget hole. But it's a popular and constitutionally mandated feature of the Oregon tax law. And it's unlikely to think that Oregonians would ever want to allocate it this way, observed Mr. Shetterly, a former state legislator. So even a substantial kicker won't help lick what's ails the state budget. --AS
The INDY HOP: The Oregon Trail Talk That Hits Home
A symposium on the Oregon Trail is going to be held this March in Independence. But if you want to see it you may have go a "fur piece." That's the advice from folks in Missouri, and they have good reason for giving it. They also claim rights to the Oregon Trail -- as a starting point for the one that ended here. The meeting will be held at The National Frontier Trails Museum in Independence MO. If you decide to make the trip all the way to the show-me state, hats and jackets are recommended. "Though we fully expect sunny skies and 70 degree temperatures, Missouri weather can be unpredictable in March," according to conference organizers. --AS
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