PORTLAND — Portland is not doing a good enough job in overseeing a program to manage excess water on private properties, the city’s auditor said in a report issued Friday.
Auditor Mary Hull Caballero found that Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services, charged with regulating and treating stormwater, is not regularly inspecting household stormwater management systems that qualify their owners for lower sewer bills. Although the properties receive that discount for easing the burden on the city’s wastewater collection system, a spot check revealed that about half didn’t make or haven’t maintained the rainwater-retaining features they claimed to have.
Normally, wastewater is treated in the sewer system before it’s released into the Willamette River. In periods of heavy rain, however, the system can get overwhelmed, resulting in wastewater being released into the river without treatment.
To prevent this, the city relies on private property owners to manage stormwater on their land to lessen the burden on the collection system.
Since 1999, the city has required new developments to include systems to manage stormwater runoff, resulting in about 6,500 such structures. In 2006, the city instituted a discount for owners of existing residences who install such systems.
Deemed the ” Clean River Rewards,” one of the program’s goals is to ” increase the equity, fairness and controllability of stormwater management charges.” All ratepayers contribute to the fund used to fund those discounts.
The audit revealed that the majority of eligible homeowners miss out on this discount. About 90,000 private residences are eligible for the program, according to estimates by the bureau, yet only about 30,000 are signed up. Of the new residences that have been required to build stormwater structures, therefore making them eligible for the discount, only one-quarter participate.
Not only do those residents miss out on the roughly $10-per-month discount the program provides, but they join non-eligible residents in paying $1.70 a month to support the program.
Out of 31,134 private properties that receive the Clean Rivers Rewards discount by installing the systems, only 5 percent of them were inspected and they were inspected only during the initial application process. In a spot check of 15 properties, eight of them were not properly draining excess rainwater, auditors found.
Commissioner Nick Fish, who oversees the Bureau of Environmental Services, and bureau director Michael Jordan issued a statement in response to Caballero’s findings. They vowed to fix the system. They said steps will include a comprehensive rate study, assessing the systems on private residences and fixing data collection and storage practices.
