Local News

Bend water is famous.
It has won awards for its clarity and flavor. It makes amazing beer. It tastes great straight from the tap. It's so good we've never had to filter it. And perhaps best of all, it's cheap, flowing from Bridge Creek to Bend on a century-old pipe. But now the Environmental Protection Agency says it is not clean enough.
By October of 2014, if we do not begin filtering the drinking water we get from picturesque Bridge Creek that empties into Tumalo Creek just below the falls, the city must start sending “boil your water” notices and possibly paying costly fines.
Responding to this EPA mandate, and dealing with a few other issues such as leaky old pipes and the potential for a forest fire in the watershed, has been the subject of three years of study for city officials. But the answer they've come up with – a $68.2 million plan to install a new pipe to carry the water to a hydropower plant connected to a high-end membrane filtration facility – is not turning out to be the popular project for which they'd hoped.

Walking through the downtown branch of the Boys & Girls Club of Bend, you wouldn't immediately know that less than two months ago rainwater flooded the floors, walls and ceilings. But something is clearly missing.
There's still no sign of kids or kid’s programs and many of the club's staff members have moved their desks out of their offices and into what were common rooms or storage areas. To facilitate drying in the prominent downtown fixture (built in 1918, it originally served as the Athletic Club of Bend), the bottom two feet of the inside walls around the perimeter of the building have been removed. The kitchen has been completely vacated and many of the larger rooms now serve as storage for ping-pong tables, chairs, couches and book shelves. Though there is now no mold in the building, plastic sheets hang over work areas that expose the innards of the building.

It's cold inside the Horned Hand on this particular October afternoon. That's not surprising, though. The massive garage door that makes up part of the east-facing wall is wide open, revealing the double-decker bus parked outside that's been converted into a fish and chips cart. The open door does, however, also throw natural light on the artwork hanging on the walls of the all-concrete building. One of the pieces, a painting by Alex Reisfar, is priced at $10,000, but most are much less, as is the collection of T-shirts, Western apparel, and other clothing lining each side of the former second-hand sporting goods store.