Water - our limits to growth

 So, Tigard has options, but not Lake Oswego.  Thanks Jack.  

Nobody made LO share its water rights.  Given the slow growth rate of our city with very little land available for development, the old water treatment plant could have been upgraded and used for years.  At the very least, LO did not need the added capacity of the new water treatment plant unless there was an expectation that new development would come from annexation of rural land.  That was the plan that no one wanted to talk about. The City Council at the time loved growth and development to a fault.   More than they loved their constituents.  So they sold our water rights to Tigard because Tigard had money for expansion of our infrastructure, and it’s citizens were squeamish about drinking Willamette River water.  

I drive over the Clackamas River on the Hwy 99E bridge a lot.  If you have ever seen the trickle of water that is left in the river bed by mid to late summer, you would wonder how fish or humans have enough water to survive anymore. Lots of people are using up the Clackamas  River.  

The fact that our ACTUAL water resources are maxed out - even if there is more capacity included in our paper water rights - should tell our current City Council, neighboring cities and Metro that intense development of the Stanford Triangle needs a new source of water  (Where?) and sewer, and increases to all our overtaxed infrastructure.  

Legal challenge against Lake Oswego Tigard Water Partnership remains alive

By

 Josh Kulla

 - 

August 4, 2021

.. TigardLife

A legal challenge was initially undertaken back in 2008 by conservation group WaterWatch, which sought to limit the amount of water the Lake Oswego-Tigard Water Partnership and two other water districts could siphon from the river during times of low water flow. The lawsuit said that water rights to the Clackamas River held by the Partnership, the South Fork Water Board and the North Clackamas County Water Commission are a direct threat to native fish species that inhabit the river.

“It’s a problem all across Oregon,” said WaterWatch Executive Director John DeVoe. “The state has given away more rights on paper than it should have. And when these municipal rights spring up, they upset the apple cart and cause uncertainty for fish and for other users who may have more recent water rights.” 

The latest challenge was finally heard in January of this year by a three-judge panel. WaterWatch says that the WRD did not follow fish persistence rules because it did not consider all undeveloped water rights on the Clackamas River instead of just Lake Oswego’s. 

This could lead to limits on how much water Lake Oswego could pull from the river at certain times under certain conditions, she added. 

[Tigard City Councilor, Liz Newton] noted that the City’s participation in the separate Willamette Water Supply Program, which is intended to serve Hillsboro, Beaverton, Sherwood, Tigard and other westside cities in the future, is entirely unrelated to the legal issues surrounding Clackamas River water rights. 

“It’s just the idea that Tigard is in a unique position to be able to avail itself of several options in order to make sure we’ve got them available,” Newton said, “We have options, and it just seems like the prudent thing to do.”