Skip to main contentBull Run water: Abundant as the rain that falls on Oregon, cold as the mountain streams from which it flows, and clean as the bears that poop in it. (Not that many bears poop in it, actually. We’ve discussed this.) Lately, it’s also gotten expensive: The average monthly water and sewer utility bill jumped by $10 this summer. One contributing factor, as WW reported last week, is that surrounding communities, including Gresham, have disconnected from the Bull Run Watershed (“Drinking Alone,” Sept. 2). That means their water tastes like chlorine, and Portlanders are footing a larger portion of the $2.6 billion bill for a water filtration plant. Bring on the bears. Here’s what our readers had to say:
Councilor Angelita Morillo, via Bluesky: “Portlanders saw water rates rise 8.1% this year. The bureau expects rates to increase 9.8% each year from 2027 to 2031.
“These increases will worsen our city’s affordability crisis.
“That’s why I voted no on allowing up to $525 million in new water revenue bonds.”
_HoldenCaufield_, via Reddit: “Damn, sucks to hear Gresham residents switched to bad-tasting groundwater—the water being delicious is one of the perks of living here, costs aside. When I travel, I’m always shocked at how gross the tap water is.”
OldmanChompski, in reply: “Yeah, I live in Portland but have Rockwood water and it’s absolute garbage water now.
“Have to use a Brita filter which I never had to before. It also just doesn’t come out of the tap that cold either. If I don’t run my water for like 20 seconds it has a weird salty/ saline taste to it.
“It’s fucked. Fuck Rockwood Water.”
michaelh, via wweek.com: “For us longer-term residents, it seems odd that the cost per user is going up so much with the departure of 220,000 customers, given that in the last 20 years Portland has added approximately 110,000 to 130,000 more residents using the same basic supply infrastructure. I don’t recall the cost ever going down as those added customers were integrated into the system. 2.58 billion is a pretty astonishing number even for a larger infrastructure project. That said, I would rather spend 8% more per month to NOT drink groundwater treated with bad-tasting chemicals.”
Mid County, via wweek.com: “Electricity bill increases can be directly attributed to the explosion of data centers and the new electrical infrastructure required to support them. Kind of a regular consumer ‘penalty’ to support the techno-oligarchy in their seeming goal of AI control over humanity (yeah, not a fan).
“Massive water/sewer increases, though, totally on city mismanagement and incompetence. You don’t have to look back too far (or hard) for examples of any assortment of city bureaus’ startlingly overbudget and long delayed in completion ‘big’ projects whose additional costs were eventually filtered down to consumers (i.e., taxpayers). Consumers who have no other option than to pay it as they have no alternative service provider options.
“Yet the city’s political powers that be have the gall to act surprised at the exodus of water boards opting out and residents leaving?”
Funktapus, via Reddit: “Clean water is one of the best things you can spend money on. This is such a pittance of a cost even after all the cost overruns at Bull Run.”
Trillium, via wweek.com: “The reason why the Portland City Council decided to go with the more expensive water treatment facility was explained to me by Nick Fish back in 2018. The 2017 Eagle Creek Fire burned right up to the edges of the Bull Run watershed and he, as the commissioner in charge of the Water Bureau, was faced with the reality that if the fire got into the watershed they would have to drop fire retardant over the area, effectively poisoning the city’s water supply. The additional reality was that all of the ash and runoff from the burned areas would need to be filtered out of the water and Portland did not have a filtration system capable of doing that. People have long been hung up on the cryptosporidium claim, but according to Nick Fish, he and the other members of council were also concerned about creating a viable water system in an era of climate change and wildfires.
“The cost overruns can largely be chalked up to poor project management, but the reasoning for the filtration plant is sound.”
Arborist, via wweek.com: “I’ll gladly pay a bit more to have a stable, reliable, safe source of drinking water with updated infrastructure. Less people pulling from Bull Run means it will last longer. Good for the long-term outlook. Honestly, water prices have been too low, leading to people wasting water unnecessarily, as we see with people watering giant lawns that provide no value aside from personal aesthetics. It’s a critical resource that is only becoming scarcer. Responsible stewardship of scarce resources is becoming more and more important.”
Allan, via Bluesky: “Build the UV filtration system, dummies.”
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