Resident alleges faulty reservoir rehabilitation, settlement and withheld report

A St. Helens resident told the council during public comment on March 19 that the city’s 2,000,000-gallon reservoir suffered failures he attributed to inadequate testing and oversight during a rehabilitation project.

Ron Tramlitz said the rehabilitation was engineered by a hired firm (which he named as Enerdy Jenks) and asserted the city allowed construction without interior access, concrete testing or “due diligence.” He told the council core samples taken May 24, 2022, showed delamination present in February 2016 and alleged Walker Consultants prepared material for mediation that the city declined to release.

Tramlitz further alleged that a settlement agreement signed April 22 documented that Western Partition carried no liability for the reservoir failure and criticized the city’s handling of the investigation and any withheld reports. He named Walker Consultants and Western Partition in his remarks and said he was advised to stop probing the issue in late 2022.

Council procedural staff interrupted the commenter for time near the end of his allotted remarks; the transcript shows the council chair asking him to conclude. The council record at the work session does not show any subsequent staff report, presentation, or formal council action related to the reservoir during this meeting.

The statements in the public comment reflected the speaker’s allegations. The meeting record does not itself verify the engineering findings, the existence or terms of the settlement he cited, or Walker Consultants’ work product; those items were presented as claims by the commenter.

City staff present later in the meeting reported separate items on environmental review and property transactions related to the Arcadia project and said they were continuing work with DEQ. The reservoir issue was not listed as an action item in the work-session minutes excerpt provided.