City of Sandy considers dumping treated wastewater into Sandy River

Influx of millions of gallons could increase temperature of namesake river. Critics worry about city’s history of water violations

By Sheraz Sadiq. November 18, 2021. Jordan Wheeler is the city manager of Sandy, Oregon, a city of more than 12,000 roughly 30 miles southeast of Portland. These days he spends much of his time thinking about sewage—how to treat it and dispose of it safely for a community that grew by a third in just a decade, according to 2020 census data.

That growth is a key reason city officials are embarking on the biggest public works project in Sandy’s history, a $94 million overhaul of its wastewater system.

The overhaul includes upgrades to its aging collection system and existing treatment plant, along with the construction of a new facility to better handle current and future wastewater treatment and disposal needs.

“The tough choice here is to find a way to treat the water and discharge it so that [the fix] can last for generations to come,” Wheeler says.

But a key proposal the city is considering to fix its wastewater woes is proving controversial—dumping its treated wastewater into the Sandy River, which runs just east and north of town.

Sandy currently operates under a permit issued by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to discharge its treated wastewater, or effluent, into Tickle Creek, a tributary of the Clackamas River that runs just west and south of town.

The permit limits not only the volumes of those discharges but also when they can occur—only between November and April. During the summer, Sandy’s treated wastewater is sent to a nearby nursery for irrigation use.

An Oregon state rule prohibits Sandy from dumping more effluent into Tickle Creek because it’s part of a river basin providing drinking water for 300,000 people.

So the city is exploring pumping millions of gallons of treated wastewater from its new treatment facility year-round into the Sandy River, which is much bigger than Tickle Creek but also home to federally protected and endangered populations of wild steelhead, coho and chinook salmon.

“When we talk about discharging water into the Sandy, it makes everybody uncomfortable because salmon runs, it’s such a beautiful feature, nobody wants to change that,” says Don Hokanson, a Sandy City Council member who serves on the wastewater oversight committee.

Hokanson says city officials are considering discharge alternatives, including diverting treated wastewater during summer and fall into 30 to 60 acres of wetlands the city would need to construct at a cost of several million dollars.

Rising river temps

Opposition to the plan has mounted in recent months. Local conservation groups and residents worry that discharged, treated wastewater could raise the temperature of the Sandy River, which flows for 56 miles from the glaciers of Mount Hood to Troutdale, where it merges with the Columbia River.

Troutdale is one of two places, along with the community of Hoodland, that is currently permitted to discharge its effluent into the Sandy River, according to the DEQ.

“The optimal (water) temperature for most salmonids is between 50 and 60 degrees,” says Liz Perkin, a river ecologist with the Native Fish Society.

MORE: Behind the scenes at the Bingen-White Salmon Wastewater Treatment Plant

In July, the organization wrote a letter to Wheeler, the Sandy city manager, to advocate against discharging treated wastewater into the Sandy River, especially in summer and fall.

“If you have water that’s coming in at 75 degrees … (that) starts to get into a lethal temperature for most salmonids,” says Perkin. “Their metabolism increases, their respiration increases and the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water decreases when the water temperature increases.

“I’m also a realist and I understand the city of Sandy is growing. We just want to make sure they’re doing as much as they possibly can to reduce their impacts.”

Limited options

In October, the Clackamas River chapter of the national conservation nonprofit Trout Unlimited also wrote a letter to Wheeler expressing opposition to discharging effluent into the Sandy River, which it claims could worsen the impact of climate change on rising stream temperatures.

The author of the letter, chapter president Ruth Ann Tsukuda, also implored the city to not “waste this valuable commodity” and instead use the treated wastewater to expand its recycled water program.

But according to Wheeler, Sandy has already looked into that possibility. An engineering firm hired by the city prepared a report in October 2020 to review the market for recycled water customers, such as farms and nurseries in the region.

“The biggest constraint is year-round. Container nurseries don’t need large amounts of water during the winter months … and we have constraints on where to put that water during those months,” says Wheeler.

In December, Sandy expects to release a study it commissioned evaluating different strategies to mitigate temperature impacts on the Sandy River.

The State of Oregon considers temperature to be a pollutant, subject to monitoring and threshold limits to protect migrating and spawning salmon and steelhead in its waterways.

“The regulatory agencies are going to be very careful about what the city is going to need to do to make sure that water entering the Sandy River is going to be highly treated and safe,” says Wheeler.

History of violations

Environmental watchdogs have reason to be vigilant given Sandy’s alarming system failures and repeated violations of Oregon water quality standards and state pollution limits.

In 2018, Sandy signed a Mutual Agreement and Order with the Oregon DEQ that requires the city to develop a new wastewater facilities plan and timeline to make the necessary improvements to better comply with the terms and conditions of its permit.

“That really was a wakeup call for the city council, some of these permit violations, that hey, this isn’t just a finger in the dyke fix,” says Hokanson. “You can’t continue to not comply with the regulations and the permits, which is why we are in a place where we have to make these improvements.”

MORE: The tortured history of the Sandy River Delta

A public records request filed by Columbia Insight with the Oregon DEQ revealed dozens of incidents of violations associated with Sandy’s wastewater operations stretching back to 2013.

In 2017, the DEQ fined Sandy nearly $37,000 for exceeding pollution limits under its discharge permit and for a chlorine leak that killed fish in Tickle Creek. (The fine was later reduced to $7,000.) State regulators found that the chlorine leak was 2,500 times the limit toxic to aquatic life.

A month later, a Sandy sewage plant operator notified the DEQ that 2,000 pounds of raw sewage had spilled into a tributary of Tickle Creek. The sewer collection system at the time of the failure had been supervised without a certified operator for nearly six months, according to the DEQ, triggering another permit violation.

In October 2019, the Sandy City Council adopted its new Wastewater System Facilities plan as a kind of blueprint to achieve compliance with state environmental laws.

But violations continued. Monthly discharge monitoring reports from October 2019 to April 2020 show that Sandy violated limits on pollutants such as E. coli, ammonia and un-dissolved solids in discharged wastewater more than 70 times.

Enforcement and compliance

“It’s the state’s position that the existing wastewater treatment plant is undersized and not capable of meeting the existing flow that it gets to achieve compliance,” says Kieran O’Donnell, the DEQ compliance and enforcement manager.

In February 2021, O’Donnell wrote a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to request enforcement action under the Clean Water Act for Sandy’s “chronic and substantial violations (which) present an ongoing risk to water quality and the environment.”

In a statement, EPA spokesman Bill Dunbar confirmed that the federal environmental watchdog will now be “the lead agency on this enforcement matter” and that it “has been getting up to speed on the history of the violations, as well as the city’s plans for a new wastewater treatment system.”

Describing the recent intervention by the EPA, Sandy City Manager Wheeler says the current enforcement action is based on past violations at the sewage treatment plant. He acknowledges “we have a problem with our wastewater system.”

MORE: As cities grow, wildlands are being eaten up

Parts of the existing sewage treatment facility date to 1971. Updates will “automate some of the systems” and “get the most life out of it,” says Hokanson.

Other improvements include installing new equipment to enhance the treatment of wastewater and boosting its capacity to handle peak flows during the rainy season.

Originally slated for completion in November 2021, supply chain disruptions blamed on the pandemic have pushed that back to summer 2022, according to a project update report.

The city envisions also building a new membrane bioreactor treatment plant, although that won’t be completed for another five years. The facility would be located three miles upstream from the existing plant but would handle only liquid waste, using a combination of biological processes and advanced filtration technology to treat wastewater to “almost drinking water standard,” according to Wheeler.

Broken trust

For Janet Davis, a board member of the Sandy River Watershed Council who lives with her husband and two dogs along the banks of the Sandy River, the city’s past violations loom large, eclipsing assurances about improved safety and vigilant oversight.  

“The city just doesn’t have capacity to oversee contractors very well,” she says. “So it’s hard for people in the area to trust that they know what they’re doing and that they will monitor it carefully.”

“The problem with trust is once you lose it, it’s really hard to regain it,” says Hokanson. “It comes down to building better relationships, especially with those people who are stewards over these various areas and interests.”

Sandy city officials appear to be listening to concerns of community members and groups like the Clackamas River Basin Council. They’ve organized tours at the sewage treatment plant with engineering consultants on hand to answer questions, held public meetings and responded to letters urging the city to focus more resources on shoring up its existing infrastructure.

In May, construction crews began punching through concrete streets to replace 55,000 feet of leaky sewer pipes, some of which were built when John F. Kennedy was president.

Wheeler says the effort should reduce the volume of rain and groundwater that can seep in through cracks and mix with wastewater heading to the treatment plant.  

This month, the Sandy Public Works department is expected to complete an application to the EPA for a $63 million, low-interest loan that would pay for roughly two-thirds of the city’s wastewater fixes.

Additional funding for the project comes from the State of Oregon and rate hikes, which went into effect in January 2020 and doubled the average wastewater customer’s monthly bill.

Sense of urgency

Sandy must still win approval from the state DEQ to discharge treated wastewater into the Sandy River. Wheeler hopes to submit a permit by late next year.

As the city grows, its elected leaders not only feel urgency to “right the ship,” as Hokanson says, but also sense an opportunity for public messaging around the simple act of flushing a toilet or running the garbage disposal.

“One of the messages I hope to share with our city residents is to make a connection with their actions,” says Hokanson. “My actions, our actions can have a positive or negative impact not only on the new and old wastewater plant but also the rivers around us.”

Sheraz Sadiq is an award-winning journalist and producer based in Hood River, Oregon. He’s produced videos and reported on topics including climate change, self-driving cars, criminal justice and edible insects.

Appreciate this story? To support environmental journalism on Columbia Insight click here.