Monday, October 19, 2009

More on Bend’s upside -- and slippery slope

Bend’s water supply is one of the purest in the country. Thanks to the generous annual snowpack in the Cascades, experts say the aquifer under Central Oregon is so large it has yet to be quantified.

The plentiful water supply has not prevented the usual battles over water between farmers/ranchers, the outdoor recreational industry, environmentalists and common households.

In the past 20 years, the number of golf courses in the area has doubled. This provides an easy scapegoat in water arguments, but the reality is more complicated. Central Oregon is not a natural agricultural region, yet miles of canals, much of them unlined or unpiped, divert water from the Deschutes River to alfalfa farms where the growing season is less than 90 days per year. While a few miles of the canals are being lined or piped, much of the water, at least 30 percent, is lost to seepage in the porous, volcanic soil.

In Bend, where much of the irrigation water is diverted, the Deschutes River is reduced to a trickle particularly near the ironically named The Riverhouse motel and convention center.

Bend, which gets most of its water from Bridge Creek, more than 10 miles east of town, is facing a number of water problems. Surface water faces far more federal regulations than well water.

Consequently, Bend didn’t plan for the federally-mandated costs of purifying surface water. (In the forcibly-annexed areas of Bend, the households and businesses are served primarily by Avion Water Co., which relies on well water. This water is tastier and has less chlorine than Bend’s water.)

Also, since Bend subsidizes development through low or now non-existent impact fees on water, roads and sewer, the burden for paying for the demands on the water system fall to residential homeowners. In the past 5 years the city has raised its water/sewer rates more than double, and sometimes triple, the rate of inflation. A 1,200-square-foot home with three residents and a small 200-square-foot lawn, can expect an $80 monthly bill in the summertime.

This is only half the problem. Bend is now contributing to the pollution of the water supply. The city has no storm drainage system other than catch-basins which routinely overflow when a half-inch of rain falls in the city. Also, Bend is trying to control sprawl -- a noteworthy goal -- by forcing more housing density in the city limits. This means more roads, driveways, roofs and other surfaces routinely create flooding problems, particularly on the west side. The overspill, most of it polluted, flows east into the Deschutes River.

To pay for flood control, the city unilaterally taxed every household $48 per year. At the same time, it required no developer to pay anything toward flood problems that their developments will cause. Again, the city chooses to subsidize the richest people in the community with the money from everyone else.

On the forcibly annexed southeast side, flooding isn’t the primary problem, though it does exist, particularly on Murphy Road. No, many of the homes are on septic systems, whose resultant nitrates pollute the water supply. The city has made no attempt to put sewer systems in these areas. The city is obviously waiting for the state Dept. of Environmental Quality to put the hammer down and require that homeowners to pay at least $30,000 per household to correct the problem. The city, though, has an estimated $400 billion sewer problem. Again, since it approved almost every single development no matter what the impact on water, sewer or roads, Bend allowed sewage pumping stations throughout the newly-developed areas of the city served by the sewers. Electrical outages have caused a number of sewage backup problems in various areas of the city that have these electronically-controlled pumping stations. Lawsuits followed.

So, Bend is polluting itself in one of the most pristine areas of the country. It’s mind-boggling that this could happen, but this has happened in every single urban area of the country, and in some rural areas, too. We never learn, even when we think we do.

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