To whom it may concern,
As a resident of Estacada, I am in support of the City of Estacada’s grant application for the new Wastewater Treatment Plant. Estacada is a small town, with just over 5,000 residents. Our plant is at the top of the Clackamas River which provides drinking water to over 300,000 people. Our current plant is outdated and reaching capacity.
The current plant cannot process the waste well enough to reach effluent levels as required by our NDPES permit. The City has repeat violations on the effluent discharge resulting in an MAO with DEQ. The timeline in the MAO requires a new wastewater treatment plant be built by 2026.
We are concerned about the impact of our effluent discharge, not only the environmental impact to the Clackamas River, but the drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people. As a result, the new wastewater plant will be built with Membrane Bioreactive technology, which will produce the cleanest effluent possible to protect the Clackamas River.
This new plant comes with a large price tag, $42 million. When spread across around 2,800 users this will result in our sewer bill almost doubling. There are many residents in the community who cannot afford this increase. Almost 30% of households in Estacada make less than $35,000 a year according to Census data. This is a significant portion of the community who will feel the hardship of this increase.
The City is working to value engineer the project and decrease costs. Having grant funding will assist with decreasing the amount that rate payers will have to pay for debt service for a project this large.
I sign this letter in support for the City of Estacada’s grant application. Help our city protect the environment, drinking water to hundreds of thousands of people, and decrease the costs to our hardest hit members of the community.