Bend officials are including a major sewer project to fix problems in southeast Bend in their next two-year budget. The City Council is scheduled to vote on the budget Wednesday.

The proposed budget would allow the city to spend $18.1 million to extend a major sewer line known as the southeast interceptor. Even after two years, the city will still have several more years of work to do, according to the city’s five-year capital improvement program. The total estimated cost would be $61.6 million, according to the proposed budget.

The first phase of the interceptor, which cost $12 million, is already complete. City Council decided to stop work on the project in May 2012, to re-evaluate the city’s sewer work priorities. The portion of sewer line installed so far is not connected to the rest of the system and is not in use.

Once complete, the southeast interceptor would pick up wastewater from neighborhoods and businesses south of Murphy Road and generally east of U.S. Highway 97, said Tom Hickmann, Bend’s engineering and infrastructure planning director. The line would also bring the option of sewer to many homes that are still on failing septic systems, although homeowners would decide whether to pay for sewer connections, Hickmann said. As the line moves north along 27th Street, it would pick up sewage from business near U.S. Highway 20, as well as St. Charles Bend and other medical buildings.

“The southeast interceptor was a priority project under our existing collection system master plan that was completed in 2007,” Hickmann said. The city began work on the line in 2007, and has completed the design for the entire project.

“So we’re at a point that we can really go to construction on the interceptor, but over the years and with the financial squeeze that we’ve all been under with the economic recession, there was a hesitancy to spend that kind of money without some further assurance that this was really a priority and that this was the right solution … to the issues.”

Now, the city is developing a new sewer master plan and a citizen committee is weighing in throughout the process. The city is using a new hydraulic model to identify the most problematic areas of the system, and Hickmann expects to finish that work in the fall.

“When we complete (the model), if it confirms the current solution and it says this is really the preferred solution for that area, (the citizen committee) will likely recommend to council that we proceed with the project, which is why we put it in this biennium’s budget so it would allow us to proceed,” Hickmann said. “Now, if it comes back and says, ‘No, there’s another solution here that can be done at a lower cost, we would look at that and we would then reallocate those dollars that we budgeted for the southeast interceptor.”

There is no quick fix for the sewer ills in southeast Bend, according to the city. Last year, the city identified short-term options to alleviate sewer issues in several areas, until officials decide how to proceed with major projects. City staff did not propose an interim fix for southeast Bend, because no temporary solutions for the area exist. “All the solutions out there are regional, and they’re big and they’re long-term,” Hickmann said.

“The current system down there is a network of pump stations that is operating at capacity,” some of which date to the 1970s, Hickmann said. “You can’t keep adding pump stations; it’s really at its limit. So you need a completely different solution than what we currently have.”

The two main options that remain are installing the large interceptor pipeline, or building a satellite wastewater treatment facility for the area, Hickmann said. Data from the sewer system model will help the citizen committee decide on the best option.

A solution to reroute sewage from southeast Bend would also take pressure off other areas of the city system, because the wastewater currently travels through the downtown core. That pipeline also carries water from Southwest Brookswood Boulevard and other parts of the west side.

Finance Director Sonia Andrews said current sewer rates will not cover the cost to complete the interceptor, but the 6 percent annual sewer rate increases proposed for the next two years would go toward the interceptor. The city could apply for low-interest loans from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, Andrews said.

The city charges development fees to recoup the cost of building infrastructure to serve new homes and businesses. However, the city does not have any of that money set aside to solve southeast Bend’s sewer problems because during the construction boom in the mid-2000s, the city had not updated the fees to reflect the southeast interceptor cost, Hickmann said.

“The (development charges) we collected were really insufficient to pay for this problem that we have out there,” Hickmann said. The city’s existing development impact fees will need to be updated again, once sewer system modeling is complete and the city adopts a new sewer master plan.

Assistant city manager Jon Skidmore said the city is budgeting for the project to provide that option for the citizen committee and City Council, if they want to finish the project.

“We didn’t want them to make a request and have no money to do it with, so that is why we included it in the budget,” Skidmore said.

Mayor Jim Clinton said addressing the sewer problems in southeast Bend will become increasing important as the economy recovers.

“I think this thing has been around on the (capital improvement project list) for five years and the impetus for it kind of decreased, considering that the development in the southeast part of town was not happening,” Clinton said. Now, as the economy improves and development starts up again, Clinton said, “some version of it needs to be done.”