Clackamas Water and Environment Services broke ground Feb. 21 on a pipeline intended to replace the old outfall nearing capacity during peak weather events.
After a brief program, which included speeches by Oregon City Mayor Denyse McGriff and County Commissioner Martha Schrader, the crowd made their way to the hard hats and golden shovels to dip into dirt to symbolize their part in the construction efforts.
The groundbreaking marked the beginning of actual construction which will be completed in three segments.
Segment one of the pipeline will originate at the Tri-City Water Resource Recovery Facility and be completed using “open cut” construction, which is exactly what it sounds like: dig a hole, place the pipe in the hole and then bury it. According to the project map, this phase of construction will run alongside the current outfall pipeline.
Segment two of the project will break off from the current pipeline with a half-mile-long tunnel (9-feet around) while skirting the I-205 southbound lanes on the east side of the freeway and ending in the Willamette River. This segment of the project will be completed using a tunnel boring machine, which will be lifted on to a barge and sent back to Germany at the end of the project.
Segment three will be “in-water construction,” which involves barges and divers. Installing a diffuser, officials say, would ensure treated water coming into the river is properly mixed and diluted in order to meet state water quality standards for boating, swimming and aquatic resources.
The whole process is expected to take seven months and, once completed, will expand WES capacity to provide wastewater services and stormwater management. The completed pipeline will transport treated water, called “effluent,” from the Tri-City facility into the river.
“We're building a 90-inch diameter outfall. It's from our treatment facility here at Tri-City out to the Willamette River,” said Jeff Stallard, capital program manager at WES, “We need this for additional capacity to allow growth and expansion of our housing and cities.”
The project itself has been a long time coming.
“We started this project in 2019,” said Stallard, who is tasked with ensuring WES delivers on their capital plans, “We did some planning and some routing studies and other things to further refine the project. We brought a contractor on board in 2022 to help finish up the design. And since it's a tunneled project, it's a pretty unique construction type. We wanted to have the contractor have input on the type of tunnel machine and alignment.”
Commissioner Mark Shull praised the efforts of the WES advisory committee and all those involved with the outfall project and the forward momentum of the county.
“I go to all these groundbreakings, you know, but it's always fun to do that,” Shull said, “This project has been a result of years of engineering. I just talked to one of the civil engineers. You wouldn't believe how much time goes in just to this. It's just amazing.”
Progress on this project, however, affects more than just residents of Clackamas County, it also affects Indigenous populations who hold the Willamette as sacred.
“We met and did site walks back in 2019 with the Grand Ronde tribe,” Stallard said, “They've been engaged to review our plans and are providing feedback. We're currently finishing up discussions with the Grand Ronde tribe, or in discussions with the Grand Ronde tribe, to provide clarity around what kind of potential monitoring we might need to do during construction as we work our way towards the river. They're the ones that we have been engaged with through the permitting agencies in terms of that have provided feedback.”
The Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde declined to comment on this story.
Clackamas County is looking for a name for their soon-to-be-arriving tunnel boring machine. Name submissions to the county will be accepted until 5 p.m. on Feb. 29 at https://www.clackamas.us/wes/tunneler.
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