City Council - Special Meeting

GOOD AFTERNOON. THIS THURSDAY, AUGUST 27, 2026 MEETING OF THE LAKE OSWEGO CITY COUNCIL IS NOW CALLED TO ORDER. MS. HAWKINS, PLEASE CALL THE ROLE.

HEAR BUCK.

HERE.

COUNCILORS WENDLIN. HERE. BURDICK. HERE. CORRIGAN. HERE. EDMONDS-MANS. HERE. COUNCILOR APKIN IS EXCUSED. AND COUNCILOR MABOUB.

HERE.

Thank you very much. Well, we've called this special meeting just for one purpose, and that is to consider the approval of a contract to handle the repairs on the recent Del Prado Street water main failure. We have our Public Works Director and City Engineer Erica Rooney here and Assistant City Engineer Mort Arush Navani, and we appreciate you being here to talk to us about the contract.

Great. Thank you, Council and Mayor, for taking the time out of your summer evening to have this meeting because it is critical for us in order to keep moving on this project. We really appreciate your time this evening. We'll try to keep it brief, but we thought we'd also give you an update a little bit about what happened, kind of a recap of that. and where we're headed in the next several weeks. Before I do that, though, I just do want to say it's going well if something like this can. It is actually going really well with our collaborative approach with all of our different teams out at maintenance. with our engineering team and our inspectors all stepping up and making this the priority of the week for the Public Works Department, and it's gone well, and I'm very proud of the accomplishments we've made and the collaboration that we're going to have, hopefully, with this with this contractor. With that, I'll turn it over to Mort, who's going to give us a brief overview of the situation.

Thank you, Erica. Thank you, Mayor and the councillors. I would also like to thank you for making this a special meeting on a short notice. I would also like to thank the City Manager's Office and our legal team, because they work magic that we were able to get this meeting together and the contract drafted in less than 48 hours. So with that, I would like to share with you what we are facing with and what we are doing and what we have done so far. So the event, last Friday night around 11 o'clock, We had a 12-inch cast iron pipe in Del Prado Street failed, and the pipe was installed back in 1971, to give you a little bit of the context of the age of the facility that failed. And then immediately our public works and the fire department and the police department responded to the emergency and our public works crews shut down a 12-inch main. Just to give you a little bit of an idea, it's not an easy task to shut down a 12-inch main that has over 100 PSI. of pressure in it. So it's not like a sort of a kitchen faucet, if you will. Yeah, we were losing several thousand gallons of water a minute. So that takes some time. And then once we secured the site, we contacted the tourney excavation contractors. And they responded immediately in the middle of the night. And we were able to actually complete the repair by 7 o'clock in the morning. Except there are several other steps you have to take after the pipe is secured. You have to flush the line. You have to disinfect it. You have to test it. So the service came online around 1 o'clock Saturday afternoon. It's still extremely responsive and quick. Because of the amount of water we have lost and some limited areas have lost basic pressure, it's a normal standard or procedure that you issue a limited boiled water notice. until you repressurize the system and also take the necessary test, which is basically bacteriological testing. That we did that immediately and then we could lift the boiled water Sunday afternoon at 2 o'clock. Just to give you an idea, the impacted area is Del Prado, and the break was right around here, but the force of water actually have damaged significantly all the pavement along the way, if you will. And I have some pictures I'll show with you to see what water can do. And what we have done to date is the water has been restored so residents have access to good, clean water, as always. And then we also had lost the pavement on that street, if you will. So we have removed all the pavement, and we graveled it a little bit, and everybody has access to their homes. And then also... the water flow had carried lots of debris, if you will, soil, gravel, vegetation, and things like that, that it just carried down the street and on Botticelli, that we have to actually chase that down and clean all that debris that was removed from the street. And also we had to clean the street about about three-quarters of a mile or so. And then, because this is on a fast, you know, track, if you will, we are conducting engineering assessment as needed. For example, when the pavement was on and it had collapsed, we didn't know what shape the base material was. So we got a geotechnical engineer, you know, help us walk the site. a couple of days ago, and then we continue to do that. We are doing that engineering mostly in-house, if you will. Then the next steps is basically get your approval so tourney can go full force to replace that 12 inch pipe with new pipe. And then also we have to restore pavement. for that entire street section and also some of the curbs, gutters, you know, some of the cash bases and, you know, things like that that have been damaged during the event. Budget and schedule, which is always near and dear to our hearts when we do projects, our initial estimate that we are asking for is authorization for $1 million. But everything we have seen so far, barring any huge surprises, is going to come below that amount. I sort of hesitate a little bit to throw a number out there because we still don't know the full impact of it. But it won't be $1 million. But we still like to have that authorization. And then the contract we have with Terni because it's an emergency. And we couldn't basically identify an exact scope. It's what's called time and material or force account. Basically, we have their rates, and they will do the work that we direct them to do so we know what we are paying for. And it's sort of agreed upon, and it's consistent with the state of Oregon wage rates, if you will. And then our estimate for completion of this work is October 15th. But then again, if everything goes well, I think we are going to get it all done before then. But that's what we are holding ourselves to. in terms of making sure it happens. Because there could be potential issues around if all the materials are in stock or if there are any, you know, long lead, special, you know, parts for the water line and things like that. But every indication we have so far, most of the materials are available and we should get them and be able to finish it by October 15th. Then this was taken by the fire crew. It's a short video. It's pretty impressive. This is at Botticelli and Del Prado intersection to get you sort of oriented. And here it is. And this was a culprit. There he is. The LTS charge. It broke. This actually, the crack you see, it's a crack at the bottom of the pipe. And it's not unusual for cast iron of that vintage. Basically, they get pitted. Because especially in this area, they were constructed in native material. It's mostly clay and it's actually slightly corrosive. Whereas the current standard is you actually envelope the pipe in sand and gravel so you don't have corrosive soil in touch with metal. And then these are just some of the pictures of the damage. You can see the pavement is gone. the curb and gutter is undermined, and the pavement is basically settled, and that's when we started moving the pavement. This is Tuesday?

Yes.

This is Tuesday? Yeah, we took the pavement off Tuesday, yeah. Right.

Yep.

And then this is, like I mentioned, we actually did quite a bit of inspection of our stormwater facilities because the materials were carried or the debris was carried into the lines and catch basins. And that's what it looked like when we inspected it Monday morning. And then our own public works group removed them. And they removed about 25 yards or so, I believe. And this is yesterday, so we basically did some graveling and restored the roadway to the best we could right now, so temporarily residents would have access to their homes and they won't be inconvenienced while we do the construction. Any questions?

What kind of pipe did you put in temporarily?

Okay, what we have, we just replaced the broken piece with like 10 feet of ductile iron pipe. Now, that old pipe is still in service, and the plan is essentially construct a new 600-foot ductile iron pipe and just abandon that old cast iron pipe. Oh, I see. Right. The reason being, Mayor, is we could have said, oh, we fixed it. Now we are good. I'm afraid next week I'll be before you again and say, oh, remember the pipe that broke? It's got another leak someplace else. It just makes sense because we had to reconstruct the road anyway, if you will, because it was damaged and gone, and might as well spend a few more dollars and replace it with something that would have another 60, 70-year-old useful life.

Just so we understand, in the contract, what portion of it do you think, percentage-wise, will be to replace the pipe, and how much to rebuild, or what portion?

If I were to give you a rough, rough estimate, it's like 50-50, if you will. It's about that, I would say. Councilor Corrigan?

Yeah, I hate to ask, but do you think we have much more cast iron pipe like this around?

Mountain Park. Just a little bit of a news flash. We have about 122.2 miles of water line of all sizes in the city. Cast iron is 57% of that, which is about 70 miles. And ductile iron, which is the preferred material, is 40% and 50 miles. And then other, galvanized and PVC is only 2 miles or 2% of it. So we have quite a bit of this material. IN OUR SYSTEM, AND WE ACTUALLY HAVE MAPS THAT SHOWS WHERE THE CONCENTRATIONS ARE. SO AS WE PUT THE CIP TOGETHER, WE TRY TO FOCUS ON THE AREAS THAT ARE THE HIGHEST RISK, IF YOU WILL. OBVIOUSLY WE CAN'T CHANGE, YOU KNOW, 70 MILES EVEN IN TWO OR THREE YEARS, BUT WE TRY TO PRIORITIZE BASED ON THE RISK OF A FAILURE THAT THE PIPE MIGHT HAVE, AND HOPEFULLY OVER THE YEARS WE'LL GET RID OF THE CASTOR.

What are those risk factors, just the age and material?

Okay, the risk factor is basically what's the consequence of the pipe failure. For example, if we have a regular street, if there is such a thing, versus if you have a pipe that goes under the freeway, the freeway pipe If that failed, the consequences of that is a lot greater than if a pipe failed in a neighborhood, if you will. So those are the factors you consider when you prioritize where you change.

So the city does proactively replace pipes?

Yes, we have a plan. And as a matter of fact, we have certain areas of town where we've had more breaks than usual. And shocking or not shocking, it's the cast iron pipe. But that neighborhood has much smaller pipes. So when they break, their impact is a little bit less, like you just mentioned, the consequence issue. So in this case, the reason why we're going the extra mile here right now is the fact that it's a 12-inch pipe. And we lost a whole lot of water that night for a couple hours. And the potential for damage is much higher. We could lose the entire another road, all of that. So that's why we want to say right now it's time to make this the priority over, say, a six inch in another part of the town, because this is where we have the most potential for consequences. Very helpful. Thank you. Councillor Mance.

First of all, that's an amazing turnaround. What you did in that short amount of time is really remarkable. And the next time someone brings up that government drags their feet, I think the before and after really should be shown. That was very well done. How much 12-inch pipe do we have in the city? Do we have a rough idea?

I don't know the number. We can get that. Yeah, we can get you that number. We have that information. But it's going to be on tens of miles. Okay.

It's not the predominant size. Got it.

Okay. And thank you. That's really all I want to say. Great job to the team.

It was all the crews in the field, actually. I mean, they did amazing work.

Yeah. Director Rooney, you mentioned about, we were talking before the meeting about the public alert system, and you had some good information on this. This was actually the first time we had used the public alert system for a utility notice. Did you want to, was it always working to educate, you know, Megan here I mean has spent a lot of efforts you know and we have the disaster preparedness fair coming up we've always had a big push about getting our residents to sign up for these emergency alerts and they are for a variety of emergency wildfire emergency utility emergency but it does enable the city to target groups but it sounds like we learned that the system isn't quite yet perfect yet that we're working with the county.

Yeah, absolutely. So we'll see these at the emergency prep fair later in September. We have these out on the front counter. It definitely is a good thing to sign up for, period. And if you get information that isn't critical to you, that's okay. That's better than not getting information, right? So this was the first time we chose to use it, and we chose to use it in this case because it was a pretty wide area that needed to get the notice. It was more than we... You know, it's one thing when you have 10 houses to go tell them, but it's and we can go door to door and we do and we knock on the door and we talk to people and that's great. It's fantastic service. But when you start getting into dozens and dozens and in this case, hundreds and hundreds of units that need to be notified, we just don't have the resources, a.k.a. staff, manpower, womanpower. to do that sort of thing, to get physical notices to everybody. So we thought, let's try the public alert system. We did. We worked very closely with the county. And we learned some things from it. I think we reached a lot of people. I don't have perfect numbers on it yet. We're going to be meeting with them as a follow-up to all of this as to how we can make sure we do better targeted notices so that somebody on the south side of town doesn't get the alert when we're focusing on the north side, for instance. But work to be done, and we've got people already going at it.

That's great to hear. And even this nice little, it makes me think, in our own communications, because we always have new people moving to town. Yes. You know, obviously, the fair is well attended. It's not all 42,000 people. Maybe even in the Hello, LO, we just add even this. And I know we do put notices out pretty regularly about it. But it's in an email, or it's like an article in the thing. Even just having this in there as an insert a couple times a year.

Yeah, and even we are making sure that about 50% of the people in, like us, we go receive still a hard copy utility bill. 50% receive it by email. So we're going to make sure that we get another reminder. about this in those emails and in those hard copies as well. That's great.

Yeah. It's always one of those things you don't think about until you need it.

Exactly. And not everybody reads their utility bill top to bottom. Really? I know. Shocking. Oh, my gosh. I didn't know that. I know. There's a couple I missed, but yeah. So we're working on it. Yes.

Thank you very much. I mean, you did a wonderful work. It's my part of town, I received the thing. I am in the alert. I did it. And I was worried. I said, whoa, I drank the water yesterday.

And you're still alive. That's a good sign.

So it was. But yeah, my question is, how about neighbors? Our constituent, nobody has any effect from this, like some stuff destroyed from their home, or it was only the public space?

There may be some property damage, and we'll be working with those property owners, perhaps, as if claims get filed, we'll handle those through our typical channels through our insurance.

Okay.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, no, that's... Thanks, along with everybody else. I just want to tell you, I was very impressed with your communication that at least council got. That's the exact information that, I mean, well, well, well done. It was perfectly informative. It was up to date. There's enough detail on it that we knew kind of what was going on, and it wasn't like a, COUNCIL PACKET WHERE THERE'S TOO MUCH INFORMATION, JUST KIDDING, BUT IT WAS EXTREMELY WELL DONE AND THANK YOU BECAUSE I KNOW IT'S, YOU'RE DEALING WITH THE EMERGENCY AND IT'S THE LAST THING YOU REALLY WANT TO DO IS PILL US IN, BUT

No, it's important.

But thank you, because I received a number of like, oh my gosh, did you hear what happened? I did hear what happened, and I can tell you exactly what, and I said, don't worry, the water's all good. I mean, it was just, you know, it was nice to be able to authoritatively answer questions without having to not make up information, but say, oh, I'll get back to you as soon as I find out. So anyway, thanks. It was fabulous. And thanks. This really is the top level. customer service that that like us we go really does that I am just super proud of I mean when I was following these things and I oh my gosh the thing is blowing up and you kind of have it all under control and it just goes to show the professionalism and the The depth of level of expertise that we have in this city, I'm just impressed as can be. So thank you.

We have very dedicated staff that show up from all the departments. Fire police obviously but also in public works, and you know we're calling GIS people over the weekend It's in hey get online and make me a map and it's it's people respond And I appreciate that they are so dedicated so yeah, and you appreciate your your words as well.

Thank you Thank you all for moving so quickly on this and for bringing this contract forward and was someone like to make a motion I'll make a motion to approve adopt resolution 26-5 one

Second.

All right, motion is made by Councillor Winland, seconded by Councillor Verdick. Any discussion? No? Okay, all those in favour say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, motion passes 6-0. It's approved. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Awesome job. All right, everyone, we are adjourned. Thank you.

Yep.

That's great.