Beneath the Surface

City of Lake Oswego and Lake Corporation veil lake pollution

By Lee van der Voo

The Lake Oswego Review, Nov 16, 2006, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

A bleak financial picture

Anyone who lives here knows it: Oswego Lake is naturally green and, historically, copper sulfate has been used to reduce its algae levels.

The use of copper sulfate – a pesticide loosely regulated by the federal government – has never been a secret here.

Oswego Lake occupies 415 acres at the bottom of a watershed. Much of what flows downhill in Lake Oswego goes into the lake, including eroded soils and fertilizer, both high in phosphorus, fostering algae growth.

Copper sulfate, for roughly 50 years, offered a solution.

But in the spring of 2003, a firm hired by the city to replace a failing sewer pipe also found the former solution had consequences.

Early tests showed abundant copper in the lakebed, according to Lake Oswego City Manager Doug Schmitz, which threatened to trigger scrutiny of the lake under the federal Clean Water Act. If copper levels topped EPA guidelines, the testing could lead to costly safety controls or an expensive clean up, which could stall or kill the pipeline project.

In a meeting between city officials, regulators and the Lake Corp, federal agents said they would require chemical testing in the lake where engineers needed to dig.

“They were kind of painting a pretty bleak picture and one where we could see the dollar signs going ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching and how do you control that?” said Joel Komarek, city engineer for Lake Oswego and the liaison to contractors on the job.

Engineers from Brown and Caldwell, the firm that designed the floating pipe, presented the dilemma posed by environmental testing to Schmitz in October 2003. Schmitz immediately halted the job.

He said his decision was based in part on the copper findings.

“(The copper) was prevalent enough that it raised a concern about whether there was a potential brownfield site here. It got into who is responsible for its removal, if that came down from the regulatory agencies,” he said.

“If we end up in a squabble with the Lake Corp over who was responsible for the clean up, if that was required, then … the budget estimates did not include toxic removal costs,” Schmitz said.

He said other concerns about getting land from the corporation to put the pipe on and the cutting-edge technology eyed by Brown and Caldwell also influenced his decision.

Days after the project stopped, Jon Holland, an engineer with Brown and Caldwell, asked for more information on copper from the Lake Corp. In response, he received an e-mail that confirmed the potential for problems.

Copper: Friend and foe

E-mail and phone records set the average use of copper sulfate by the Lake Corp at about 21,000 pounds a year between sometime in the 1950s and 1993. The exact starting date is not known. At its highest use during that time, 37,000 pounds of the pesticide were applied to Oswego Lake in 1983. Lower doses continued from 1993 until 2001.

Light use of copper sulfate is legal and can control algae problems. Because copper is a metal, it kills algae on contact and settles quickly to the bottom of waterways, where it binds to the soil and is considered harmless. But users of the pesticide are required to keep levels of copper in sediment below EPA standards. The exact standard for Oswego Lake is unknown because it requires a calculation based on other water quality data not available.

In Washington, annual doses of 5,000 pounds of copper sulfate for 30 years contaminated the floor of Lake Steilacoom, near Tacoma, which covers 330 acres, about 85 acres less than Oswego Lake and is shallower at 20 feet deep. The Washington Department of Ecology banned copper sulfate statewide as a result. Studies at Lake Steilacoom showed copper levels in the lakebed were so high that the copper stopped binding to sediment and was floating free in the water column.

When present in water, copper is toxic to most aquatic life and is easily absorbed through the gills of fish. Large amounts of copper are also corrosive to the skin and eyes of humans.

In Oswego Lake, copper will stand in the way of digging into the lakebed and complicate the pipeline project. It will also complicate dredging, which is becoming necessary as erosion from streams creates deltas that obstruct boating.

Phone records outlining talks between city officials and the Lake Corp show that West Bay has received the highest doses of copper sulfate in Oswego Lake. Tests there showed no problems in 1991, according to lab work supplied to engineers by the Lake Corp.

Bill Wiley, president of the Lake Corp, said he was not aware of any data to the contrary.

“To the best of our knowledge, it’s not a problem. It’s probably not relevant unless the sewer is to be on stilts in the lake, in any case,” he said, referring to a construction method that would require testing for permits.

But city officials were concerned enough to back off. Between May 30, 2003, and March 2005, the only official activity on the pipeline project was a study to pull it out of the lake. The costs appeared prohibitively high, estimated then at $97 million.

City violates DEQ plan

Yet the need to replace the existing sewer line was real. Lake Oswego sewers first began to overflow in 1996 because of limited capacity in the existing pipeline. The city saw massive overflows of sewage in the winter of 2003 during heavy rains. Wet weather in 2005 did the same thing, and meanwhile, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality warned Lake Oswego, insisting on a fix.

Should the sewer interceptor ever completely fail, the result would be a massive infusion of untreated sewage to Oswego Lake and the Willamette River. DEQ officials are aware of the potential for catastrophe and in 1998 and 2001, waived fines for overflows on the single condition that Lake Oswego set a construction schedule to build a new pipeline.

Lyle Christensen, who oversees the project for the DEQ, said he was never informed that work on the pipeline stopped after the 2003 spills and that the lags in planning violate the city’s agreement with DEQ.

“As far as I knew they were still proceeding,” Christensen said. “We kind of said in 2003: ‘Continue and provide us with your plans for resolving this.’ I don’t think we ever penalized them at that time but certainly they were under warning.”

Since last winter’s spill of 97,000 gallons of sewage into the lake, Christensen said DEQ called for tighter timelines on a sewer fix, again in lieu of fines. Instead, he said, several months of negotiation with the city have dead-ended and fines are pending. Christensen said his experience with Lake Oswego differs from that of other cities, which typically keep construction plans on track to avoid fines.

“Generally that’s what it takes, but in the case of Lake Oswego, it’s a high-cost thing and maybe they’re rolling the dice and seeing how long they can go,” he said.

While work on the pipeline stood still, Schmitz said he and Mayor Judie Hammerstad met quarterly with Lake Corp officials. In recent years, he said, these regular meetings have included talk about hurdles in the pipeline project. There are no minutes or records for what takes place in these meetings, but a letter to Schmitz from Holland suggests the city use private meetings to negotiate for land and a construction plan that could avoid federal permits.

Five of the city councilors interviewed for this story – Jack Hoffman, Gay Graham, Ellie McPeak, Frank Groznik and John Turchi – knew of the meetings between Hammerstad, Schmitz and Lake Corp. Each said they did not know negotiations were aimed at avoiding federal permits and three said they were unaware the project ever stopped. Lynn Peterson denied any knowledge of the problems or related meetings.

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