Clean Streams gets tentative OK

By Kara Hansen

The Lake Oswego Review, Nov 19, 2009, Updated Nov 21, 2009

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The Lake Oswego City Council adopted a new Clean Streams plan Tuesday night with one caveat: Councilors will revisit the plan, intended to guide the next decade of surface water management, within the next few months.

Mayor Jack Hoffman called the document a “foundation,” laying the groundwork for “next steps” toward cleaning up the watershed, an expensive endeavor.

“This doesn’t go far enough,” Hoffman said. “But if we agree it’s a problem that needs to be solved, we’re going to have to spend money.”

For now, the cost to Lake Oswego residents will begin with a 50 cent increase in surface water management rates, bringing the fee to $8.96 monthly in 2010, with annual increases of about 7 percent in subsequent years.

The boost in revenue will help fund the equivalent of three full-time employees to carry out plans aiming to clean up roadways and to encourage low-impact development options like rain gardens, which can absorb rainwater and filter out sediments.

Staff would also oversee about 30 construction projects designed to slow the flow of runoff and reduce streambank erosion, the biggest source of sedimentation and pollution in places such as Oswego Lake.

Elizabeth Papadopoulos, city project manager, said staff and consultants selected a “moderate” plan, because there didn’t seem to be enough community support to support a more expensive “Cadillac” approach.

The selected projects concentrate on “inputs to streams” and stabilizing eroding channels, said Papadopoulos.

At Tuesday’s meeting, no one testified against higher surface water utility rates. Instead, critics said the plan takes the wrong approach for long-term watershed health, the ultimate goal of a healthy streams program.

“I consider the Clean Streams Plan anti-stream restoration,” said Jonathan Snell, chairman of the Lake Grove Neighborhood Association, former Natural Resources Advisory Board member and self-described advocate for surface-water management. “We can do better. We need to do better.

“We have limited funds, so it’s important we have a watershed-based plan.”

He questioned the proposal to upsize pipes that funnel stormwater throughout the city’s system, including $2.3 million for bigger pipes in the Boones Ferry Road area and more than a $1 million for similar work to control flooding in the First Addition Neighborhood.

Both of those areas have “good soil permeability,” a fact documented in the city’s 17-year-old surface water management plan, Snell said. “Bigger pipes and sustainable surface water management don’t go together.”

Jeff Ward, lake manager for the Lake Oswego Corporation, called for restoring the natural functions of streams as the most effective management approach.

“We’re trying to accomplish what the watershed would have traditionally accomplished,” Ward said.

While the Clean Streams Plan is intended to be a “living document,” Mark Rosenkranz, also of Lake Corp., said it would be difficult to change without a timeline for implementation or clear measures of success.

Some council members said they agreed. Though it took three years to develop, at an estimated cost of $500,000, several worried the plan didn’t chart a clear course to healthy streams.

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