Bend Approves Plan to Expand Water Plant, Waits on Forest Service Land Transfer

The Bend City Council on May 20 approved a master plan to expand the facility that filters Bend’s main water source for drinking. The plan provides the roadmap for future upgrades including a new pretreatment system, hydropower generation facilities, future storage reservoirs and other infrastructure City officials say is critical to ensuring long-term resiliency in a major water source for residents.

Approval of the Outback Facility Plan comes as the City awaits a final decision from the U.S. Forest Service on the transfer of a 48-acre piece of land north of Skyliners Road. Some groups have objected, citing concerns over the planned development and future flows in creeks west of Bend.

Pending the land transfer from the Forest Service, the City aims to construct $60 million in improvements at the Outback site over the next few years to protect the City’s water supply. Those upgrades are funded through residents’ water bills, although the City hopes to win federal grants to help ease the cost.

Bend’s two-year budget adopted last year reflects rate increases of about 5% each year.

The potential for increases to water rates depends on the needs of the water system overall, and is outside the scope of the Outback plan, said Jacob Larsen, a spokesperson for the City.

The most expensive of the short-term upgrades is a new $50 million pretreatment system to remove wood, debris and dirt from the water before it enters the filtration facility. That’s meant as a guard against closures due to future wildfires and extreme rains, which can wreak havoc by throwing trees and loose soil into streams and clogging the treatment facility.

Bend has identified wildfire as a “major risk” to the City’s water supply, said Ramsey Krieps, a City of Bend project engineer working on the Outback plan, in a May 20 presentation to the Bend City Council.

Bend serves about three-quarters of its residents with water, while private utilities serve the rest. Of the City’s water supply, about 60% comes from surface water and 40% from groundwater wells.

Bend diverts surface water at an intake station along Bridge Creek, about 11 miles west of Bend, and sends it 1,000 feet downhill through pipes to the filtration plant at Outback. Bridge Creek is a tributary to Tumalo Creek, with headwaters in the Broken Top area of the Three Sisters Wilderness.

As part of the expansion, Bend plans to build turbines inside of the pipes to harness energy of the flowing water. The $12 million project would generate 1.3 megawatts of electricity, equivalent to powering about 750 homes. That’s more than enough to power the entire Outback site, and additional power could be sold back to the grid, Krieps said.

Bend took municipal ownership of its water from a private utility in 1926, after water in the Deschutes River became tainted from pollution. In 2015 the City modernized its treatment plant to provide filtration of gut-wrenching pathogens like Giardia. The City says the 48-acre expansion could provide room for a plant to treat PFAS — or “forever chemicals” — should those ever be identified in the City’s water. New reservoir storage, additional groundwater wells and wildfire defense infrastructure like a helicopter landing pad and tanker fill station could also be built out, according to the facility plan.

Bend’s pending land transfer with the Forest Service would nearly quadruple the size of the Outback site. The acquisition is proposed under the Townsite Act, which allows the Forest Service to transfer hundreds of acres of land to local governments for public facilities.

As part of a plan to expand the facility that filters Bend’s main source of drinking water, the U.S. Forest Service has tentatively approved the transfer of 48 acres near Skyliners Road. The City is waiting on a final decision from the Forest Service following an objection period. Credit: Eli Zatz

The Forest Service approved the transfer in a Final Environmental Assessment and Draft Decision issued in February.

In an objection letter submitted April 10, environmental group Central Oregon LandWatch alleged the Forest Service didn’t properly analyze the potential effects of the expansion as required under federal law. LandWatch argued that with Bend’s population growth, coupled with the proposed hydropower project, it’s reasonable to assume the City will want to pull a larger amount of surface water in the future, which could jeopardize flows in Bridge Creek and Tumalo Creek.

Bend’s state-issued surface water right for Tumalo Creek is for 36 cubic feet per second — about 16,000 gallons per minute. That’s about twice the amount the City can pull from the stream under a permit from the Forest Service that expires in 2037. Bend’s water system master plans have shown that flow amount — 18 cubic feet per second — is high enough to meet demand until about 2040, said Larsen, the City spokesperson.

“Increasing the flow rate above 18.2 cfs would require significant investments to the existing infrastructure to be able to accommodate increased flow rates,” Larsen said in an email to the Source. “Costs to expand this infrastructure to process more than 18.2 cfs is not being programmed in the foreseeable future.”

Still, LandWatch wrote that the land transfer from the Forest Service should include covenants restricting the City from diverting more than about 18 cubic feet per second from Bridge Creek.

Jaimie Olle, a spokesperson for the Forest Service, said the agency is expected to issue a final decision on the land transfer in the next couple of weeks. Forest Service officials could modify the decision based off of an objection, “if they see there is a need,” Olle said.