City officials suggest a consortium to use Adair Village water rights

By Hasso hering

Albany Democrat-herald

For now it's all just brainstorming, but Albany city officials have been thinking about water service in ways that would help Albany, Adair Village and Millersburg.

The result of their ruminations is laid out in a 13-page memo sent to the Albany City Council as the basis for a discussion at the council's public work session starting at 4 p.m. Monday at City Hall.

The memo lays out ways in which the water systems of Adair could be connected with the ones serving Albany and Millersburg, making use of Adair's largely unused water right.

The possibilities include serving Adair from Albany while the village's aging water plant is mothballed and eventually replaced.

They also include Albany relying in Adair for an emergency water supply in case of a break in the Lyon Street bridge pipeline serving North Albany, or an even bigger emergency shutting down the city's water intakes in the Santiam River system.

The memo takes account of many, many complications in coordinating matters among three cities and mentions one way this might be solved - via a a water commission governing the combined system.

Albany and Millersburg jointly operate a new water treatment plant near Scravel Hill, taking water from the Santiam River. Albany also maintains its old treatment plant on Vine Street, fed by the Santiam Canal, which begins on the South Santiam above Lebanon.

Albany also has had contacts with Adair, largely because it has started selling water to the Dumbeck Lane Water District outside North Albany, which previously had bought its supply from Adair.

Mark Shepard, Albany's city engineer and assistant public works director, is listed on the staff memo as its principal author, along with Jeff Blaine, the assistant city engineer.

The staff gives the council several recommendations. Among them:

• If it's interested in learning more about a coordinated effort on water resources such as a water commission, the staff will look into it further and report later.

• Have the city work with Adair and Millersburg to justify the water needs of Adair Village to the state Water Resources Department. If Adair does not prove its need for 82 cubic feet per second of Willamette River water, it could lose the right to use it later.

• Start discussions with Adair about serving that community with water through a proposed 1,500 feet of new

12-inch pipeline.

• Negotiate with Adair for assignment of part of Adair's water right to Albany.

• And conduct further studies on the operation and capacity of the existing system serving North Albany including the Broadway Reservoir at Gibson Hill and North Albany Roads.