Dissent grows as regional sewer group comes closer to forming

Milwaukie still hasn't joined, Gladstone has reservations and West Linn officials could face a recall

By Matthew Graham And Kara Hansen

The Clackamas Review, Nov 3, 2009, Updated Nov 4, 2009

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Both Gladstone and West Linn endorsed a regional sewer advisory body to the county commission, leaving Milwaukie the only involved city to not have signed on.

The advisory body will not replace the boards of the two involved sewer districts — the TriCity Service District and Clackamas County Service District #1 — but will be a separate body to advise the county commission on larger, more long-term regional sewer planning. The group has been meeting for close to a year trying to figure out how it would operate and what sorts of issues it would tackle.

Now, with Gladstone, West Linn, Oregon City, Happy Valley, Damascus and representatives from unincorporated North Clackamas having signed on, it can transition from something of an ad hoc group to an official advisory board.

Milwaukie two weeks ago said it thinks the group is important and would like to sign on, but won’t do so until the group stops changing the language of the advisory body bylaws. Members have continued to tweak language, and Gladstone Mayor Wade Byers said the Gladstone council approved it unanimously, but only with some language change recommendations.

While Byers said the city signed on as a vehicle to have discussions, he said his council still struggles with two major aspects of bringing the districts together.

“We did what we think was the right thing 30 years ago (in building a plant) and we want to make sure patrons in our city don’t have to pay for development in other parts of the area,” Byers said. “We paid for our development.

“And then there’s the topic of decommissioning the Kellogg plant and our view is we don’t have any responsibility to pay for decommissioning the Kellogg plant. It’s a separate district’s plant and it’s five or six miles from our city, so those are points we think are fair to our ratepayers.”

Similar issues were raised in West Linn. That council added a clause to the new committee’s bylaws that stresses individual cities’ duties to fund growth within their own jurisdictions. That language will still need to be approved by the county advisory group, but councilors Scott Burgess and Jody Carson said it clarifies that West Linn won’t pay to subsidize growth in other areas.

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