BLOG: Stormwater and a Discount
Sam Adams
I am the City’s sewer Commissioner, so I will try and lay out the basic science and history of the issue in this blog entry. I will summarize what I propose to do next in a separate blog entry.
Portland is 145 square miles.
Each year, 37 inches of rain falls in our city.
That’s means we have to find a place for up to 100 million gallons water.
About 40 square miles of Portland is impervious.
Rain cannot soak through impervious surfaces like streets, roofs and parking lots; when rain that sloughs off these imperious surfaces it is called “Stormwater.”
Our streets are the biggest generators of stormwater.
As stormwater runs off an impervious surface it often picks up nasty fertilizers and pollutants, it gets heated and it can erode the landscape.
Treatment cannot remove all the pollutants.
Clean or not, gravity pushes our stormwater to the Willamette River or it soaks into the local underground aquifer.
On rainy days, the City’s combined sewer system cannot handle the volume of both the stormwater and sanitary sewage.
The system’s overflow escape valve is the Willamette River.
Over 3 billion gallons of stormwater and sanitary sewage overflowed into the Willamette River last year. It used to be a lot worse.
Rightfully, State and federal environmental regulators have ordered the City to stop most of these overflows.
Thus, the federally mandated $1.4 billion project to retrofit Portland’s combined sewer system, install 14,000 sumps and provide incentives for dealing with stormwater on site where it is created.
The incentive is called a “stormwater discount.”
In 1991, the city Council created a 100% stormwater discount for commercial properties.
The courts ordered the city to expand it to residential properties. The city did.
Meanwhile, the City annexed East Portland neighborhoods into the city. Many East Portlanders gauged their support for annexation based on getting a 100% stormwater discount.
However, in 1995 the City Council stopped the program due to its cost.
In 2000, the city council decided to reinstitute a 35% stormwater discount program. But, problems with the water billing prevent the discount from being implemented.
Until now: The new computer billing systems should allow us to start granting stormwater discounts by September, 2006.
This is how I propose to implement a long-delayed stormwater discount program: http://www.commissionersam.com/sam_adams/files/092405_stormwater_community_meeting_final_no_notes.pdf
Posted by Sam Adams on October 7, 2005
(5) Comments | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
Filed Under Front Page, Good Government, Our Initiatives
Comments by site visitors
Two modifications to the Commissioner's statistics:
--"Each year 37 inches of rain falls in our city." An average of 37 inches of rain falls on the city each year. It can vary greatly from year to year.
--"The federally mandated $1.4 billion project to . . . install 14,000 sumps." There are approximately 9,000 sumps in the city's streets. Around 25% of those were constructed as part of the CSO projects. The others were installed at other times for other reasons.
Posted by: Linda | Oct 10, 2005 3:51:21 PM
I was one of many that the water bureau paid an outside contractor to disconnect our drain pipes.
Our water bill goes up.
Now, I see signs, (which I don't doubt the water bureau paid for)placed in peoples yards.
Our water bill goes up.
I can't help but wonder when the money I pay, a dreadful amount, can come off my bill instead of programs like the afore mentioned and the purchasing of those covers for the reservoirs?
Posted by: Judith Templeton | Oct 21, 2005 6:45:17 PM
What are other governmental officials proposing? I suspect if they knew the level of harmful particulate matter and disolved toxins that were being pumped into the Willamette they might be more apt to respond. I propose getting the local middle and high schools involved to help take readings in order to gather data to prove that the stormwater has a significantly negative impact on the Willamette and thus the area water supply. Maybe this is already being done. Just a thought.
Posted by: Jenny Dalllman, High School Biology Teacher | Mar 20, 2006 12:12:49 PM
That is pathetic and positively REPULSIVE. The Government needs to understand that this is the only United States of America, the only Earth, that we will ever inhabit, and the way we are treating it is disgusting. Our taxes are almost all going to road and building reconstruction, as well as supporting our troops in Iraq, when we should be concentrating on the way our water sources are all practically POISONED.
...I'm done now.
Posted by: Cassie Souchek | Apr 6, 2006 7:35:09 AM
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What does this mean for business? When will you have a public meeting for business and industry?
Posted by: Jay Griffith | Oct 10, 2005 9:33:14 AM