Last spring, the city of Gresham changed its primary water source from the Bull Run Watershed to groundwater by expanding its current groundwater system. Before the switch, groundwater was primarily used as a backup resource during summer months.
The choice to separate from Portland’s water systems stems from Portland’s 2017 decision to build a new water filtration plant after the Oregon Health Authority ordered the city to treat its drinking water for the parasite cryptosporidium.
But the change has been noticeable to some Gresham residents. Groundwater is harder than the water from the Bull Run Watershed due to higher mineral content, and the treatment method changed along with the source, which has left some Gresham residents tasting or smelling the shift.
We’ll speak with Steve Walker, Gresham’s water operations manager, for more information on the switch and what Gresham residents can expect.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed using AI and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller coming to you today in front of an audience at the new beautiful gigantic East County Library in Gresham. We are going to bring you a variety of conversations today. We’re gonna hear about road safety, about urban farming and food security. We’ll also hear the story of this brand new building. But we start with an issue that has been front of mind for many Gresham residents recently – the water supply. Earlier this spring, the city changed its primary water source from the Bull Run Watershed to groundwater. It stems from a decision that Portland made back in 2017 when the federal government said that Portland had to build a new filtration plant to treat drinking water for the parasite cryptosporidium. That led Gresham to go its own way. Recently, some residents have complained about the change. They’re noticing that their new water is harder than the water they were used to and that it has a different smell and taste. Steve Walker is up here with me to talk about this. He is the water operations manager for the city of Gresham. Thanks very much for joining us.
Steve Walker: Sure, glad to be here.
Miller: When did the city of Gresham start talking about switching water supply?
Walker: 2019 is when the conversation really started.
Miller: Why? So Portland said, after years, Portlanders and other folks will probably remember this, they kept saying to the feds, “No, we’re fine, we’re fine, we’re fine. Every now and then there’s cryptosporidium.” The feds said, at a certain point, “Time’s up, you have to change your ways and build a very expensive system, somehow, to get rid of this.” So what was the thinking in Gresham when that Portland decision happened?
Walker: Yeah, it’s a good question. We talk about cost a lot, and cost was an impact. The Portland water treatment plant started out at $500 million and now it’s $2.6 billion, I think, so the city’s portion of that, typically the participation in that would be like 10%.
Miller: You mean the city of Gresham.
Walker: Yeah. The city of Gresham only.
Miller: So as a major user, you’re gonna have to pick up some of the tab.
Walker: Yeah, for sure. And cost was a driver for sure, but the other thing was just the opportunity to change our supply to something that we had control over. Portland’s a great system, great water department, but they’re subject to issues like any water department, and they’re so large that we are subject to those issues once in a while. We sometimes have to conserve when there’s a storm or an issue, things like that. So just tightening up our system so it’s really specialized to us and Rockwood [Water] People’s Utility District, I think, was important.
Miller: I want to hear more about that second part in a second, the freedom that this gave you to have your own system, but just to stick with the cost for a second. It’s one thing to say we’re gonna have to pay 10% of what’s turned out to be a ballooning infrastructure project, but when you go your own way you also have costs, new costs of a much bigger groundwater system. So can you give us a sense for, to the best of your ability, what the average ratepayer would have been paying for water if you’d stuck with Portland’s Bull Run system and what they’re paying now?
Walker: Yeah, I get that question a lot, and it can be frustrating for folks and it’s really hard to say, “Oh, your bill would have gone up by $19,” or something like that. I cannot say that because there’s a lot of factors that go into that. When council passes a rate package, it’s for a certain amount of years and it may encapsulate other things, so it’s really hard to pinpoint that. And the other thing, too, is the city, when it decided to go its own way with Rockwood, really the communication and the details about the repayment to Portland and what that rate would be and how long it would take for us to pay them, things like that, those communications really aren’t there.
So it’s kind of hard to really pinpoint that. So to really tell folks, hey, yeah, your bill would go up by “X” amount of dollars, it’s almost impossible, but I would say that the complete project now, we’re not done with our project, but the amount of money that we’re gonna spend is very close to complete, and it’s, I think, $196 million and Gresham’s portion of that is $95 million and the remainder was Rockwoods. So, compare that to the 10% participation rate of Portland’s $2.56 billion project, and that would have been just Gresham paying that 10%. But it’s really hard for me to say, obviously not a finance guy, to really help folks and say, pinpoint what that dollar amount would be, the difference on your bill.
Miller: But if I followed your math there, the simple back of the envelope math says that Gresham’s piece of the capital totals would maybe be something like two and a half times more, based on what you just said, if you’d stuck with Bull Run.
Walker: That’s what I understand.
Miller: OK. So then let’s turn to this question of the freedom you have now to be more in charge of your water. What are examples of where that’ll actually make a difference to people who live here?
Walker: Well, one thing that’s on my mind a lot when I look at this project is the fact that, and I don’t wanna get too far ahead here, but it does tie in…This water that we’re on now is the same water we’ve been supplementing with for a long, long time, because in the summertime, Portland cannot supply enough water for all its customers, so Gresham had to supplement, we’ve always supplemented with the groundwater source that we’re solely on now, so that’s a big one. We no longer have to supplement, we’re not splitting, changing things like that, so that’s really important.
And then, as far as the local control and some issues that we would face, like I said, Portland is a surface water source, so it’s vulnerable to storms and things like that. So when there’s a high turbidity event, when the water actually gets turbid, they have some issues with that, so there’s been times where we have to slow down or not take as much or supplement more with groundwater. That’s really the big one.
And then obviously, complete control over what we do with our water and our treatment, our electric bills, things like that. So efficiency, that’s one of the things that we’ll be getting into as we go along. The system is really new with our pumps and treatment plant and things like that, so the next phase is really efficiency and how we store water and time of day when we operate pumps and things like that, because you get large electrical charges if you’re using those in off-peak hours. So we’ll have that flexibility.
Miller: I have read that the Bull Run system and your groundwater system use different chemicals to kill germs. What are the differences and what does that actually mean for folks in the audience and listening now?
Walker: It’s a great question, and I think it’s a really important one. Always remember, too, we’re required by law to disinfect our water and we’re required to have a chlorine residual in our water, meaning you have to have a certain amount. The limit is four parts per million and the lower limit is a detectable amount, so when we’re on Portland Water, Portland used chloramination, and so did Rockwood People Utility District when we used their groundwater to supplement.
Miller: Chloramination...
Walker: Chloramination. Really it’s just a mixture of sodium hypochlorate and ammonia. And now we just use the sodium hypochloride portion of that, and no ammonia, and the reason for that is, Portland water is a surface water source and it has a lot of organics and things like that. Leaves get in it, things like that. So in a sense, the disinfectant needs to be more durable, and chloramination is a less reactive or less powerful agent, but it’s more durable, it stays on that chloramine molecule longer out in the system, and as it goes along, it disinfects and it lasts longer.
Now we’re on groundwater, which is, in a sense, much more pure, so there isn’t that organic loading and things like that. There’s more minerals in it, so that chloramination, that mixture of ammonia and sodium hypochloride, is just not necessary.
Miller: OK. One of the issues, as I mentioned briefly in my intro, that’s come up is taste, so I thought we would do a little bit of a – not that scientific but as good as we could do – taste test. We got tap water out of a tap at the studios at OPB, and tap water from the library here in Gresham. We put them into two cups and Sage, our executive producer, is holding them. I don’t even know which one is which… and we had a very eager volunteer who threw her hand up when I said, “Who wants to take part in this?” First of all, what’s your name?
Maddie Bravo: Hi, my name is Maddie Bravo. I am a water drinker.
Miller: That’s why you threw your hand up, because you’re an eager water drinker?
Bravo: I also love radio. I’m the station manager at KPSU, Portland’s college radio, so I’m just eager in general.
Miller: Do you live in Gresham?
Bravo: I do not. I live in Portland.
Miller: OK. All right, so you may be used to Bull Run. Then again, so is everybody else in Gresham, up until very recently. You wanna have a sip of the first one? Tell us what you think.
Bravo: All right.
Miller: And Sage, please remember which is which. OK, any notes?
Bravo: Tastes normal.
Miller: OK.
Bravo: I think the second one tasted slightly different. I don’t know if that’s a placebo effect, but they both taste drinkable to me. Like, I wouldn’t turn my nose up at either of them.
Miller: OK, but the first one was slightly more “normal” to you?
Bravo: If anything, the second one tasted fresher. I don’t know. I can do another taste test.
Miller: Yeah, if you have one more time, just to make this as pseudo-scientific as possible.
Bravo: All right, I think there’s a bigger difference on that test. The first one more reminds me of water on the East Coast, groundwater, or like when you drink water at a hotel, I don’t know. That’s the only example I can think of. And the second one tasted more like the water I’m used to.
Miller: OK, OK. Water from the East Coast or a hotel. So that was the first one. Sage, which one was the first one?
Sage Van Wing: The first one is, oh, now I’m gonna forget.
Miller: Are you kidding me?
Van Wing: I’m teasing. The first one is water from here at the
library.
Miller: OK, so you tasted groundwater from what was groundwater. Thank you very much for being our guinea pig. Steve, I mean, have you noticed a difference in the taste?
Walker: Oh, yeah.
Miller: So how would you describe the difference, and how do you explain it?
Walker: Well, first of all, I’d tell you just a little background on me. I’m from the other end of the state, from Southern Oregon, born there and lived there up until two years ago before I came here. And I worked at a water system for over 25 years in Southern Oregon, and it was free chlorination, free residual, meaning it’s just sodium hypochloride, just like what we’re experiencing here. And a lot of folks would come from California to retire, come over the border, build a nice house, and one of the first things, they’d call me up and say, “Hey, you know, my water kind of tastes like chlorine,” usually because in California, Southern California, the Central Valley, things like that, those are very large spread out systems and a lot of times they use chloramines just like Portland’s large system. So it’s one of the first things they notice, and the big driver of that is the fact that, yes, sodium hypochloride by itself is more noticeable.
And the other big one for us here is just that source change. So before, even though we’ve always used groundwater and in this source, it was always a mixture. Now it doesn’t have that organic loading, things like that, in the water to offset that chlorine smell and taste. Now we’re just in a more mineralized water that doesn’t have that taste to it and it definitely stands out more.
I’m sure everybody knows you travel around, water tastes different everywhere you go. When I go to California, it tastes a lot different than it does in Southern Oregon. Here the water now is pretty similar tasting to me, but when I first came here, it was definitely a lot different than what I was used to. So it is a big change for everybody. Your water is always gonna have different taste and odor depending on whether it comes from a river or a lake or a desalination plant or groundwater. It’s just always gonna have those characteristics of what it comes from.
Miller: And is your basic message as one of the leaders of a utility here, “You’ll get used to it?”
Walker: Yeah, I think there’s some of that, for sure, but remember, too, we can’t just drain the water system and refill it with groundwater. We can’t do that. We just have to maintain positive pressure and supply fire systems, folks’ homes, so during that mixing phase, when chloraminated water and free chlorine water, or just sodium hypochlorite water, which we have now, when those two mix, it does create more taste and odor, more of a chlorine smell. But I will say, we started on March 30 with just groundwater, but it was still chloraminated, and we stayed on there until April 27, then we made the disinfectant change.
During that first phase, we did a lot of flushing, to flush as much Portland water out as possible. And then during the second phase, we did a lot of flushing, a lot of reservoir turnover, cycling reservoirs and storage tanks as quick as possible; but that being said, there’s a lot of places for, I’m just gonna call it older water, like Portland water, chloraminated water, to hide. So when those two mix, it does create that higher taste and odor, and we’re out every day looking at those residuals, and we can tell whether we’re sampling chloraminated water or free chlorine water. We can tell the difference, the two levels, and it’s diminishing quickly. I think it’s been probably a week or so since we found any.
So we have folks call us and there’s people that are just curious about the change, the water tastes different. But then there’s people that call and say, “You know what, I did a load of laundry and I went outside and I came back into my laundry room and I could smell chlorine.” So during that mixing phase, that was a good cue for us to go out and do some sampling, and if we did find some of that chloraminated water, we’re able to do a lot of flushing, like targeted flushing, and get that out. So it’s important, if people are having that experience just to let us know still. But it is, like I said, it is diminishing, and we’re quickly closing in on the mixing going away now.
Miller: And at that point it’ll be all groundwater, no Bull Run water. All right, Steve, thanks very much. Steve Walker is the water operations manager for the city of Gresham.
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