The sale by the city of Lebanon of three lots it owns on the east side of the South Santiam River is nearing completion.
The parcels total about 45 acres and include two ponds, which were dug as rock pits before the city owned them.
The buyers, Mark and Tonya Adams, of the Adams Family Ranch, also will take ownership of a mining permit that applies to part of the three lots as well as part of 80 acres the Adams bought from the city about a year ago. The earlier purchase, for $200,000, included one pond.
In 2001, the city bought the property for a wastewater project that was never done. The city paid about $170,000 at that time for nine lots, one of which the city has no plans to sell, said Dan Grassick, general manager of utility services.
He said the agreement between the city and the Adams calls for them to pay $35,000 for the three lots, and the city to pay $85,000 to the Adams to help with costs associated with closing the mining permit.
Grassick said the city is facing $305,000 to $535,000 in costs relating to the mining permit if it keeps the property.
“It was going to be a very expensive proposition for us,” he said.
Mining permit
Grassick received a letter a year ago from the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries, commonly called DOGAMI, asking what the city’s plans for the property were and when the permit would be closed, if the city would not be mining at the site.
The city has not mined and has no plans to do so.
The mining permit covers the three former rock pits near the river and land along Brewster Road where Morse Bros. had its rock-crushing operation.
Grassick said closing the permit involves reclamation of the land, so the site is safe and accessible and all environmental issues have been dealt with.
The property by Brewster Road has been reclamated and no further action is required.
DOGAMI gave the city five years, beginning January 2011, to complete reclamation and close the permit.
As Grassick evaluated the city’s options during the past year, he found that closing the mining permit “got to be very complicated very quickly.”
The permit is in the city’s name, but it had sold part of the property.
He was happy when the Adams proposed to buy the remaining land covered by the permit, despite their request for financial help for reclamation projects.
Once the Adams own all the land under the permit, it can be transferred from the city to them.
If the city had to pay the reclamation costs, the money would have come from wastewater funds, which were used to buy the property originally.
Grassick said the city has been aware of the permit and reclamation requirement since it purchased the property.
The wastewater project planned for the area would have included reclamation activities.
When the city canceled the wastewater project, it kept paying an annual fee of $670 for the permit, thinking it could do that indefinitely, until it decided what to do with the land.
Then Grassick heard from DOGAMI.
Back story
In the mid- and late-1990s, local governments throughout the Willamette River drainage — including along tributaries such as the South Santiam River — thought they would have to make changes in wastewater treatment to meet federal Environmental Protection Agency rules.
The EPA said the Willamette River was too warm and that public wastewater plants were a major contributor to warming the river, Grassick said.
Lebanon, like other towns along tributaries, began looking at ways to lower the temperature of effluent being discharged from wastewater plants into rivers.
In Lebanon, engineers proposed piping effluent from the treatment plant on Tennessee Road across the river to lowlands and small waterways on the east side, he said.
The effluent would be discharged there and flow through flood channels, wetlands and ponds into the river further downstream, by which time the temperature of the effluent would have dropped to an acceptable level.
By 2006, the state DEQ had determined that water temperature isn’t a problem on the South Santiam River — for both Lebanon and Sweet Home — because of the Green Peter and Foster dams.
In essence, Grassick said, in the South Santiam, the dams control river water temperature and wastewater plants don’t.
When the temperature issue went away, so did the need for the Walden project, though two other issues still had to be resolved.
Grassick said one issue was the need to establish a mixing zone, an area where effluent going into the river is incorporated into river water to the extent that it is indistinguishable from river water, within 300 feet of discharge.
The city solved that problem by sending effluent into the river through a large diameter pipe that is dug into the bottom of the river about one-third of the way across.
The pipe has smaller outlet pipes along the top, through which effluent flows into the river, he said.
Previously, effluent was discharged at one point along the river bank and tended to travel for a longer distance without mixing.
The other issue was chlorine removal.
In the Walden alternative, chlorine in the effluent would have dissipated as it flowed across lowlands and through waterways.
Instead, the city is adding sodium bisulfate to the effluent just before the river.
Sodium bisulfate consumes any chlorine in the effluent in seconds, Grassick said.
How much would reclamation cost?
Costs for reclamation come in two parts, technical studies to determine exactly what needs to be done, and doing the work.
Grassick said these are the goals of reclamation:
• Stabilize the west bank of the northern-most of the three ponds. The bank is part of a berm that separates the pond from the river.
• Reslope the same bank into the pond so it is not so steep.
• Make fish-friendly a seasonal high water passage between the river and an old river bed on the north end of the property. Fish get in during high water then get trapped. The state wants fish to be able to get out once high water recedes.
• Make the passages between the three ponds open year round for fish passage.
• Make culverts on the hill side above and south of the ponds fish-friendly.
In addition, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife wants to know what water species are in the ponds.
Grassick said other state and federal agencies are involved, too.