Route of new sewer line questioned.

Byline: Diane Dietz The Register-Guard

The shoe is on the other foot this week at the city of Eugene.

The city is trying to lay about 1 1/2 miles of sewer pipe along the Fern Ridge Bike Path through the wetlands in West Eugene.

The proposed route is on private wetlands just across a meadow from the proposed route of the West Eugene Parkway, a state highway project the city halted last July to - in part - protect the wetlands.

Now, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in its effort to "protect and conserve aquatic functions" of the wetlands, is raising questions about the city's proposed sewer route.

The city has yet to show that no practicable alternative exists that would be less potentially damaging to the wetlands, the corps said in a letter it sent to the city this week.

The corps says the 48-inch sewer line - buried to a depth of 21.5 feet below the wetland surface - would, block the ground water baseflow. And that would prevent cool, clean ground water from reaching Amazon Creek, the corps worries.

To go ahead with the $2.2 million project this summer, the city needs a permit from the corps and also a nod from the state Department of Environmental Quality certifying that the sewer pipe won't hurt water quality. Under federal law, the corps controls activity in wetlands nationwide.

The DEQ has scheduled an April 5 hearing in Eugene. The corps will issue its decision in the next couple of months, project manager Shelly Hanson said.

"The corps will be objective. That's our requirement. We don't advocate for projects. We're expected to have no opinions either way," she said.

Eugene Public Works officials said they must have the sewer line because they have in essence imposed a building moratorium in southwest Eugene because of a lack of sewer capacity.

Absent the sewer extension, the city is not approving property partitions or subdivisions on land within the urban growth boundary in a broad arc west of the Hynix computer chip plant off West 11th Avenue, officials said.

Public works staff fields a couple of calls a week about the problem - including from developers with tentative plans for subdivisions and industrial parks ranging in size from 20 to 40 acres, said Peggy Keppler, an engineering development review with public works.

It's a case of pent up demand, Keppler said. When the new, 20-million-gallon-a-day sewer line is complete, "We'll see a big boom," she said.

Still, the city has not demonstrated the need for the project to the corps' satisfaction, according to last week's letter.

"Our final decision will be based on an analysis of the potential impacts weighted against the reasonable expected benefits, as well as the availability of less damaging alternatives," according to the corps letter signed by Lawrence Evans, chief of the regulatory branch.

The city proposal calls for a 90-foot-wide swath to accommodate excavators and trackhoes during construction of the pipeline.

No threatened or endangered plants or animals are in the pathway, but federally designated critical habitat for the endangered Fender's blue butterfly is on nearby U.S. Bureau of Land Management wetlands. The endangered Willamette daisy and the threatened Kincaid's lupine also grow in the area.

"That raised the concern for us," Hanson said.

Bureau of Land Management officials are tracking the project, spokesman Doug Huntington said. "Nobody has raised a red flag at this time," he said.

Eugene civil engineer Teri Higgins said crews would take pains to restore the wetlands after the pipe is buried. The restoration plan calls for establishing native species, including blue wildrye, water foxtail, large leafed lupine and tuft hairgrass.

Unlike the controversial parkway, the sewer line will have no permanent impact, Higgins said. "All the areas will be restored to their original grades. Our intention is to leave it the way we found it when we are done."

Still, neighboring residents who rely on wells are raising fears of how the sewer line would affect surface-to-groundwater flow patterns.

Today, a layer of clay that's 4 to 9 feet underground divides the pooling surface water from underground water flows that wells tap into.

Neighbors such as Royal Avenue resident Ron Bounds fear that when the city breeches the clay, the surface water, thick with duck feces, will flow down into the ground water and contaminate their wells.

"It's our drinking water," Bounds said last week at a city-sponsored forum on the sewer project.

The city has a solution, Higgins said. After crews bury the pipe, they'll replace the natural clay barrier with a one-inch layer of Bentonite chips.

When exposed to water, the chips swell and form an impermeable surface, she said. "It's thicker than the thickest clay you can pull out of your backyard.

SEWER LINE HEARING

The Department of Environmental Quality will take public testimony on the wetlands sewer project.

When and where: 6 p.m.-8 p.m., April 5 at the Petersen Barn Community Center, 870 Berntzen Road, Eugene.

Written comments: may be submitted until April 20 at [e-mail] or by writing to Corey Saxon, DEQ, 2020 S.W. Fourth Ave., Portland, OR 97201.

Review project documents: at the Eugene DEQ office, 1102 Lincoln St., Suite 210.