From: Susan Hansen
Sent: Wed Sep 20 15:24:49 2017
To: Susan Hansen; jthompson@cityofmolalla.com; kswigart@cityofmolalla.com; dpalumbo@cityofmolalla.com; eklein@cityofmolalla.com; gboreth@cityofmolalla.com; lchildress@cityofmolalla.com; cdragowsky@cityofmolalla.com
Cc: jbaker@pamplinmedia.com; DONNELLY Jennifer; YELTON-BRAM Tiffany; DECONCINI Nina; HOWARD Gordon; rdavis@oregonian.com
Subject: Bear Creek Spill of CHLORINATED wastewater, permit violation!
Importance: Normal
Attachments: molalla chlorinated bear creek.jpg; City officials, One more observation after reading Mayor Thompson's less than honest information on FB about the recent spill into Bear Creek. For your information, your city website said fully treated wastewater was spilled. Yet the wastewater spilled (1) had zero permission to go into Bear Creek and (2) was chlorinated and chlorine has to be removed before wastewater is discharged, per your permit, into the Molalla River Nov -April. It is long overdue to stop the lies and half truths about your wastewater system. If your wastewater, as Mayor Thompson claimed in his post, is cleaner than the water you take out of the Molalla River to drink, I'd suggest you start drinking the wastewater and leave the Molalla River alone. Win-win, more water in the Molalla River,less processing and you could have a closed loop system, wastewater processed, put into your drinking water system and then back to the sewer plant. We would all stop fussing about your use of local watersheds for wastewater disposal and the violations that continue to pile up. Stop saying the wastewater is clean, it is filled with unknown chemicals, illegal and legal drugs - per your own admission you can't even meet the Class A discharge standard you agreed to in your permit. You can't be sure to produce water without violating total suspended solids limits, per your own admission. See attached for the emergency report about chlorinated water spill. It was NOT fully treated! If Mayor Thompson thinks it is so clean, I challenge him to drink a glass at the next City Council meeting. Susan Hansen Bear Creek Recovery -----Original Message----- From: foxglovefarm@inbox.com Sent: Wed, 20 Sep 2017 13:40:35 -0800 To: jthompson@cityofmolalla.com, kswigart@cityofmolalla.com, dpalumbo@cityofmolalla.com, eklein@cityofmolalla.com, gboreth@cityofmolalla.com, lchildress@cityofmolalla.com, cdragowsky@cityofmolalla.com Subject: Street Utility Fee Town Hall Dear City of Molalla elected officials, While it is wonderful to have a Town Hall about the potential to dun rate payers for needed street repairs of your neglected roads, reading the powerpoint I find no mention of the coming need to raise other utility rates in Molalla: http://www.cityofmolalla.com/publicworks/page/street-maintenance-utility-fee-town-hall-meeting It has already been noted that at least a 6% hike on sewer rates alone will be necessary in coming years because Molalla has woefully failed to keep up with the need to upgrade sewer infrastructure. My guess is that wastewater infrastructure improvements will be far more costly to your rate payers once Dyer does its $180,000+ assessment of your current wastewater operation. Molalla is just about constantly in violation of the wastewater permit and will face more stringent rules when it becomes a major facility in the next permit in a couple of years. My point is, if you are going to present infrastructure costs and needs tonight, the only honest and ethical thing to do would be to acknowledge to your rate payers the potential for skyrocketing sewer rates in the near future. Why are you not having a Town Hall about ALL the infrastructure problems? I interviewed Dyer in the spring and the owner of that firm said that in the work they had done to upgrade/ replace failing wastewater systems, rates had gone up to $70- 105 a month, even in tiny cities like Drain. Do you really plan to present street maintenance fees in advance of telling your rate payers what the real future costs of complying with the Clean Water Act will be? That seems less than honest. Let me know if I missed anything in this proposed presentation on roads that would disclose the need to raise more rates for vital utilities, esp. for your failing, violation prone wastewater infrastructure. Molalla's residents are not, per the admission of your past mayor Rogge, able to absorb endless rate and tax increases without putting their home ownership in jeopardy. Susan Hansen Bear Creek Recovery