Mayor Linda Watkin's Corner

May 30, 2024

When I was first elected mayor, I promised that, while I most likely wouldn’t be able to get a decrease for city water use charges, I would at least try to help us understand why our water costs are what they are. 

The questions continue to come, and each year I’ve learned a few more details, so here’s the 2024 edition:

 The basics:  Carlton City's water treatment plant is located about 3/4 of a mile downstream of Carlton Reservoir (located up Panther Creek Road). Because Carlton’s water source is surface water, it’s potentially exposed to more contaminants than you would have from an underground water source. This situation kicks in a significant number of regulatory requirements that govern processing and treatment of surface water before it’s passed on to consumers. 

Because of the range of contaminants, no one-step process is capable of meeting all of those requirements. The water treatment consists of a series of steps, each designed to address specific concerns. One of the primary concerns is the removal of contaminants such as Giardia and Cryptosporidium. At the Carlton water treatment plant, removal is a two-step process where chemicals are injected which cause smaller particles to coagulate into larger particles that can be filtered out of the water. 

Once the incoming water passes through the filters, it goes through a second step: a dose of chlorine. Because the chlorine requires time to work, the water is moved from the filters to the “clearwell", a .3 million gallons holding tank that gives the chlorinated water time to purify before it moves into the distribution piping.

This process, and the ingredients it requires, is not cheap…We have chemicals, specially-lined water tanks, maintenance of the water lines, and regular testing of the treatment facility equipment required by state and federal monitoring agencies. These are all costs that your water bills help pay. 

The process of sanitizing to comply with required health and safety standards is costly and it’s not optional – nor should you want it to be.

Beyond the basics:

Cities throughout the country deal daily with these same issues, and after the last four years discussing these concerns with other Oregon cities, I can tell you that EVERY small city in the state is struggling with the same question: How do we maintain safe water and wastewater systems without increasing service rates? 

(One Carlton neighbor recently suggested making sure system development charges for new-built homes are high enough to cover some of these expenses.) According to Carlton’s currently listed SDC rates, the per house SDC total is $28,616. The larger portion of this applies to water, sewer, and stormwater maintenance costs. Recently one developer prepaid their development charges which the city used for a badly needed upgrade of the Hawn Creek wastewater pumping station. That station transfers wastewater from the northeast and east parts of town, down Grant Street, and into the main pump station, located at the Public Works compound, which then takes it across the river to the settling lagoons.

But without development, there are no SDCs, although the water system is still in use, and the costs of maintaining it continue.  We have already talked about the deferred system maintenance that has left us in the quandary…but what do we do now? 

The alternatives: 

1. Do nothing & hope the systems hold up (they aren’t, plus that strategy is what got us into this mess in the first place). 

2. Be as frugal as we possibly can be, while at the same time assess annual cost of living water rate increases, which allow us to set aside a portion of the funds we need to make the necessary improvements. 

3.  Work as hard as we can with our state and federal representatives to find public dollars to support our needed projects. But getting state & federal assistance is highly competitive because just about every jurisdiction in our state, (and in the entire country) is facing the same deferred maintenance issues and is also looking for help.

So we're focusing multiple options--2 & 3 while continuing to search for others

Which brings us to our water bills: Remember that what you pay on your water bill covers more costs than just piping the water from the reservoir through to your faucets.  It includes: delivery-lines maintenance and other city staff services: 24/7 monitoring of the water and wastewater systems; regular monitoring (testing) of the water quality, regular monitoring and testing of the reservoir levels and conditions and monitoring the intake and treatment plants’ performance, maintaining the holding tanks and the main delivery line that brings the water into the city. And being first responders for water and wastewater line failures.

That’s about 12 miles of water line, 4 miles of wastewater line & approximately the same amount of stormwater line within the city. These lines will always be the City’s responsibility no matter who we get our water from.

So for now, we’re stuck with Option 2, the most dreaded option: raise rates. At the same time we watch for any other opportunities that may appear, such as state or federal grants. Earlier this month our city manager made a 2-day trip to Washington, DC to visit our Senators Wyden and Merkley, and Representative Salinas and their staffs in order to discuss our city’s critical infrastructure needs. We keep in close contact with our state Representative, Lucetta Elmer. And we watch for any and every funding opportunity that may come along from agencies such as the Division of Environmental Quality, the state legislature, and any federal and state assistance programs.  Your city council and staff are not counting on a fairy godmother to drop a pot full of money in our laps. Councilors all pay the same bills you pay and are just as concerned. But we don’t have any other good options.

The rate increases are NOT determined by throwing darts at the board…they are a carefully calculated formula that includes factoring in many things such as needed and required improvements to our system, debt, inflation, and more. When we reach out to agencies such as DEQ, or our state and federal representatives, their first question is: What are you doing about user rate increases? When we show them our figures, the discussion moves immediately to finding ways to relieve the burden we are all facing. 

We are working to avoid loans because that would cause an even higher increase to rates due to interest and repayment obligations. A portion of every water bill goes into an account that is specifically designated for the repair and replacement of our city water and wastewater lines. It’s not the most glamorous or exciting use of funds – it’s like a building foundation: nobody ever sees it, but if you don’t have one, the building isn’t going to last very long.

~Linda