City of Bend seeks to purchase 50 acres of Forest Service land adjacent to its Outback water plant for expansion project
(Update: Adding video, comments from city, district manager of Bend-Fort Rock Forest Service division)
BEND. Ore. (KTVZ) -- The city of Bend recently updated its Water System Master Plan, including plans for a needed expansion of its Outback water filtration plant site. On Friday, it began the formal process of buying 50 adjacent acres from the U.S. Forest Service to provide space for those upgrades to cope with growing needs.
Outback is a 15-acre, city-owned site and location of its surface water filtration facility, wells and storage reservoirs. The Outback site is an important part of Bend’s water system, as it's the main site where water from the mountains is filtered.
"We have phenomenal water here in Bend, and a lot of that is attributed to the quality at which our surface water is coming in. And our water is coming in extremely clean and clear," city Project Engineer Austin Somhegyi said Friday.
The city is working with the Forest Service to buy about 50 acres of adjacent land in the Deschutes National Forest to expand the site.
"Really, what we're most concerned about is wildfire in the watershed. Or any event that could really release turbidity into our intake," Somhegyi told NewsChannel 21.
The city says it needs to expand the size of the Outback site to complete projects that protect drinking water from the risk of wildfire and to serve the Bend community well into the future.
Asked about the potential for wildfires this summer, Bend-Fort Rock District Ranger Kevin Larkin said, "We are definitely worried."
A legal public notice was published Friday, referring to the city's application to acquire the land under the Townsite Act of July 31, 1958, and opening a process of public review. It says the goal is "to ensure safe drinking water for the continuing growth of the city, build system resiliency to wildfire risks, and meet state an federal standards for municipal water systems."
Larkin believes a watershed expansion is vital.
"The forest has established, initially, that we support this proposal and we think this is the right thing to do for Central Oregon," he said.
Larkin looks forward to hearing from the public on the expansion, the first phase in the process.
"We really want to make sure we do this with community support if this is an action we move forward on," he said.
Somhegyi said, "Really, the whole intent here is to just keep allowing ourselves resiliency, so we can continue to provide that high quality drinking water that our customers are used to."
A formal appraisal of the land's value will be conducted as part of the Townsite Act process, officials said.
The city also says it will not take any additional amounts of water from is surface water site at Bridge Creek, a tributary of Tumalo Creek, as a result of the expansion projects.
To learn more about the city’s water system and the Outback expansion, visit bendoregon.gov/water-system-tour.
