PORTLAND, Ore. — The federal government controls how cities protect their drinking water.
For decades, Portland got away with no filtration, taking water directly from the Bull Run watershed, running it through pipes and into our homes.
But two years ago a series of tests revealed microscopic bugs and the no-filtration plan ended.
The government required the city to build a filtration plant and the city council asked the water bureau for prices.
“It's the best we could do in the short time that we had,” said Water Bureau Director Mike Stuhr.
The bureau estimated a new plant's price tag at $500 million.
Stuhr said the number was crafted in 2017 after just three months of research, instead of the two or three years the bureau would normally get.
“The number we gave in August of 2017 was the best we could do at the time without having done any of - all of that legwork, the legwork that we spent two years doing now that led us to our presentation,” he said.
Their presentation last week shocked some city leaders. The price for the best and most expensive version of the plant shot up to $850 million.
That would add almost $11 per month to the typical user's water bill 10 years from now.
“Infrastructure is really, really expensive,” Stuhr said. “The plus of infrastructure, particularly our infrastructure is it lasts a very long time once you build it.”