Dive Brief:
- Portland, Oregon, has been cleared to resume construction of a $2.1 billion water treatment plant, after a nearly five-month shutdown due to a legal fight waged by neighbors opposed to the project, according to a June 25 news release from the Portland Water Bureau.
- The Bull Run Filtration Project broke ground in June 2024 but was thrown into limbo in January when the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals overruled Multnomah County’s earlier environmental approval and asked it to reevaluate its decision, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported. Construction has been paused since Feb. 14.
- Area residents and businesses sued to get the state to stop the project on the grounds that it would negatively impact natural resources, June 23 Multnomah County land-use board documents show. However, the hearing officer disagreed with their interpretation and reapproved the earlier land use approval.
Dive Insight:
The goals of the project are to bring the city up to code with state and federal drinking water rules and remove the microscopic parasite cryptosporidium, according to the project website. It entails a new water filtration facility designed to filter 135 million gallons of water per day, as well as new seismically resilient pipelines.
Portland is under a federal deadline to get the filtration system online by September 2027, per the project website. The city chose a filtration option that requires considerably more infrastructure than some other available treatments in order to address contamination from wildfires or landslides that could sully the Bull Run watershed, ABC 8 reported.
“This decision allows us to move forward to protect public health, and to provide resilience to wildfires, landslides, flooding and other natural disasters,” Mayor Keith Wilson said in the news release. “The city is eager to put hundreds of construction tradespeople back to work to complete these critical water system improvements.”
Contractors started mobilizing equipment and staff to the jobsite last week, Portland Water Bureau spokesperson Bonita Oswald said in an email.
MWH-Kiewit, a joint venture made up of Broomfield, Colorado-based MWH Constructors and Omaha, Nebraska-headquartered Kiewit, is the construction manager and general contractor for the filtration facility. Bull Run Conveyance Partners, a joint venture with James W. Fowler Co. of Dallas, Oregon, and MWH Constructors, is the CM/GC for the pipelines.
Residents of the rural community in east Multnomah County where the plant is sited have fought the project, citing worries about impacts on farmland and the desire for a cheaper option, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. These delays have caused the cost of the project to balloon: It has quadrupled in price since 2017, when it was pegged at $500 million.
