The City of Rainier has been ordered by the State of Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to improve the Rainier Waste Water Treatment Plant (WWTP).  The state could have initiated enforcement proceedings against the city but chose instead to work with Rainier to find a cost effective solution to problems at the plant.  Those problems, which persist today, include:

• The plant is not able to meet current standards for a National Pollution Discharge Effluent System (NPDES) permit.  The permit is set according to state and federal laws and penalties may be imposed for failing to comply with it.  As the plant operator, the city is violating state and federal law.  To help the city avoid fines, the DEQ issued an interim NPDES permit with less stringent standards.  This permit is only in affect until next year.
• The plant fails to meet percent removal standards for sewage waste and disinfection standards for live bacteria present in the treated discharge water (effluent). 
• The plant does not have back-up capacity for its major treatment units, including the aeration basin and the primary clarifier.  If one of these units fails, raw or partly treated sewage would be discharged directly to the environment.
• The plant’s head-works are inoperable; this is where sewage first enters the treatment plant and is screened to remove grit and other debris.  This causes maintenance problems in other parts of the plant.
• The plant’s effluent outfall (the discharge pipe) is in Nice Creek.  The creek is not big enough to meet the mixing requirements for a receiving stream and has developed water quality problems.
• The plant has odor problems in part because it uses old technology.
• The plant’s bacteria disinfection system, which uses chlorine to kill potentially harmful bacteria in the effluent, is sometimes short-circuiting.
• The plant does not have a de-chlorination system, which removes chlorine in the effluent after it has disinfected the effluent so the chlorine does not harm natural bacteria, aquatic plants and animals in Nice Creek.
• The plant is over capacity; it is treating more sewage than it was designed to treat.  The plant operates at its hydraulic capacity (i.e. the amount of water flowing into and out of the facility) in the summer and exceeds that capacity in the winter.
• The plant needs a “mass load discharge” increase.  Without this increase, Rainier will not be able to approve construction of new homes or businesses.  In order to expand plant capacity, a higher level of treatment is required by law.
• The plant has a number of safety problems.

Because of these long-standing problems, the Oregon DEQ issued a MAO (mutual agreement and order) in December of 1995 that mandates the city upgrade the treatment plant, and sets a schedule for doing so.  Since then, the following work has been done. 

• In 1998, the city hired engineers to prepare a facility plan to address the problems listed above and to provide enough capacity to meet planned growth.  The facility plan was accepted by the DEQ in February 2002. 
• In June 2004 a pre-design report for the improvements was prepared, and it was accepted by the DEQ in August 2004.
• The city council reviewed the pre-design cost estimate and became concerned about the $6.2 million estimate.  A value engineering (VE) team was hired to examine the proposed design.  VE teams include a panel of recognized experts whose job it is to find ways to design projects more economically. 
• The VE team met in June of 2005. Typically VE teams find cost cutting ideas that save between ten and thirty percent of the original cost. In Rainier’s case, however, no major acceptable savings were identified.
• In December 2005, the City authorized the engineering team to prepare construction plans and specifications based on the original pre-design.  By that time, construction costs had risen a million dollars to $7.2 million.
• The City has received commitments for a $200,000 grant from REDCO (a downtown redevelopment agency), and an approximately $670,000 grant from EPA.  That leaves around $6.33 million dollars that the City must finance on its own.  Grants from state and federal agencies were pursued but the city was not eligible for them.
• The City formed a citizen Finance Advisory Committee to review options for financing the project.  The committee recommended the city ask citizens to approve a $7 million general obligation bond measure to provide some cushion against construction related inflation.