City, EPA still in water fight

Leonard to brief council on plans to deal with EPA water rules.

Portland City Commissioner Randy Leonard has agreed to brief the City Council on his efforts to deal with new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rules that could cost the Portland Water Bureau hundreds of millions of dollars.

Leonard made the commitment Monday to Regna Merritt, executive director of Oregon Wild, the environmental advocacy group formerly called the Oregon Natural Resources Council. Merritt had written Leonard – who is in charge of the water bureau – worried that he was not doing enough to seek an exemption from the EPA rules.

“I am doing two things at the same time that the council has agreed to,” Leonard told the Portland Tribune. “First, I am pursuing an exemption from the rules. But second, I am also preparing to comply with the rules so the city will not be fined by the EPA.”

The rules require the bureau to protect its customers against Cryptosporidium, a potentially fatal parasite found in human and animal waste. According to Leonard, the EPA is requiring the city to submit a plan showing how it will comply with the rules by April 1. At his direction, the bureau is drawing up documents to show that it would build a new treatment plant and disconnect the open reservoirs in Mt. Tabor and Washington parks.

Leonard said he wants the bureau to report to the council on both efforts during an evening meeting in the Mt. Tabor area. That is the neighborhood where the grassroots group Friends of the Reservoir formed several years ago to fight city plans to replace the open reservoirs with underground storage tanks. Since winning that battle, the group has broadened its mission to fight anything it sees as unnecessary and counterproductive spending on the water supply and distribution system. It believes complying with the EPA rules is a waste of money that will end up degrading the water system.

Group co-founder Floy Jones recently sent an e-mail to supporters accusing Leonard and bureau officials of secretly planning to comply with the EPA rules. She cited bureau budget documents obtained thorough public records requests as proving the city has already agreed to spend between $403 million and $436 million to comply with the rules.

“Getting right to the nitty gritty, the water (bureau’s) detailed proposals, uncovered via the document request and submitted to the EPA without stakeholder involvement or review, call for fast-tracking elimination of the Mt. Tabor open reservoirs,” she wrote.

Leonard denounced the email as “misinformation” that he plans to counter at the briefing. No date has yet been set for it.