The Columbia Press
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Sewer: City seeks direction for treatment plant future
Continued from Page 1
ly what needs to be done for
future treatment plant expan-
sions and improvements and
how much it will cost.
“Every utility has to have an
updated master plan every 20
years or so,” Sharpsteen said
Wednesday. “Ours was last
done in 2002. In order to get
DEQ (environmental quality)
approval and any funding,
you have to have this updated
master plan.”
What follows is some back-
ground on the city’s sew-
er woes during the past five
years.
Kennedy Jenks, which spe-
cializes in municipal sewer
systems, was hired as the con-
tractor to conduct an inflow
and infiltration study for the
city in 2017. The study de-
termined where the city was
losing already treated fresh
water and how so much ex-
tra wastewater was getting
into pipes headed toward the
treatment plant.
The $90,000 project found
that 40 percent of the city’s
pipes needed to be replaced.
Warrenton loses as much
as 30 percent of its water
through leakage. Bad news for
a city with 89 miles of water
pipes.
In December 2017, city
commissioners
responded
by putting a plan in place to
raise water rates 4 to 7 per-
cent per year for five years to
pay for some of the estimated
$25 million needed to replace
pipes.
In February 2019, the city
learned its wastewater treat-
November 12, 2021
ment plant would run out of
room within three years un-
less the city took additional
action.
The city developed a plan
to spend $200,000 per year
over the next four years to re-
pair pipes.
In late 2019, Warrenton
hired Evoqua Water Technol-
ogies for $942,000 to replace
filters and perform other up-
grades at the treatment plant.
In March 2020, the city com-
mission voted to stop approv-
ing new hookups to the city’s
water system from develop-
ments outside city limits.
Meanwhile, the Port of Asto-
ria was putting plans together
to develop its airport industri-
al park and one of the tenants
would be a fairly large water
user.
The city required the port
to conduct an inflow and in-
filtration study at the airport
to find out where excess water
was seeping into the wastewa-
ter system. It found wastewa-
ter coming from the airport
was substantial, with an aver-
age of 13,000 gallons per day
in the summer to a whopping
150,000 gallons per day in the
winter.
It’s too soon
to tell whether
the city will see
major improve-
ments from the
airport’s
up-
grades, Sharp-
steen said.
Sharpsteen
“We
don’t
know because it’s not winter
yet,” he said. And the Coast
Guard has yet to upgrade its
sewer system.
This past February, the port
hired Big River Construction
of Astoria to replace the air-
port’s sewer system.
In other action Tuesday, city
commissioners
• Hired Pam Ackley as the
city’s official realtor. She was
selected as the most qualified
from the three proposals the
city received through an in-
formal solicitation.
Ackley, who served as a city
commissioner for eight years,
chose not to seek re-election
at the end of last year.
The city is reviewing all the
properties it owns and may
sell those that it can’t use.
• Adopted the daffodil as
Warrenton’s official flower af-
ter repealing a 1927 ordinance
that had declared phlox as the
city’s flower.
The request had come from
the volunteer group Spruce
Up Warrenton, which plans to
plant daffodil bulbs through-
out the city. The first project
is Saturday along a trail near
First Baptist Church.