Prineville hears updates to water and wastewater master plans; council approves one-year operations contract for ASR plant

City of Prineville planners and public works officials presented combined updates to the city’s water and wastewater master plans and a companion amendment to Chapter 8 of the comprehensive plan during a public hearing at the council meeting.

Joshua Smith, the city’s planning director, said the Chapter 8 amendment ties the master plan documents to the comprehensive plan and reduces and refines goals and policies so the documents are easier to apply when the city seeks grants or authorizes projects. He said the city has not revised Chapter 8 since 2007 and that the master plans and the chapter were combined into one public hearing to avoid duplicate proceedings. "This chapter used to be much larger…we try to reduce these down to a more workable document," Smith said.

Public Works Director Casey Keiser gave the technical presentation and walked council through 20-year capital improvement and system-development-charge (SDC) project lists. He summarized existing system metrics: "We have 29 production wells, 6,400 gallon per minute pumping capacity. That's a little over 9,000,000 gallons of water a day," Keiser said, and noted the city has roughly 4.5 million gallons of above-ground storage, about 72 miles of water lines and a little over 4,000 water accounts.

Keiser described the plans' purpose: to identify capital improvement projects necessary to maintain system reliability (waterline replacements, booster pump and reservoir repairs) and SDC-funded projects that serve growth (source capacity, new lines and storage). The water CIP list totals were presented as part of broader planning documents while the SDC project list for water totaled approximately $49,272,000, Keiser said. He also said the master plan identified the need for two new ASR (aquifer storage and recovery) wells; design for the second ASR well is expected to be completed and go to bid this summer and that construction of the funded well is already secured through a partnership with META for about $3.4 million.

On wastewater, Keiser said the city currently has roughly 65 miles of collection pipe, six lift stations, a treatment plant with four outfalls, and average daily influent near 1,300,000 gallons against a capacity of about 2,600,000 gallons per day. He described near-term CIP priorities such as lift station upgrades, a main influent bar screen replacement and lagoon biosolids removal, and noted SDC wastewater projects totaling about $12.5 million. Keiser also recommended a systemwide SCADA upgrade to improve remote operations.

Keiser framed the plans as enabling documents that make projects eligible for grant funding and that the list of potential SDC projects reflects a 20-year need that will be prioritized and adjusted as growth occurs. "This is saying this is all the potential projects that we might need to serve 20 years worth of growth…what happens will really dictate what of these projects we do or don't ultimately need to do," he said.

Separately, the council unanimously approved Resolution 1600, a one-year personal services agreement with Divergent Engineering to operate and maintain the city's ASR water treatment facility and continue 24/7 monitoring and further plant development. Keiser told the council that Divergent "increased the overall production of that facility by about 23%" under the prior year contract and that the new agreement is smaller in cost (presented in packets at about $79,000) because fewer major one-off repairs are anticipated this year.

The master plan ordinances and Chapter 8 amendments will return to council for formal ordinance readings and potential adoption at a subsequent meeting; council opened the hearing but did not adopt the ordinances at this session.

What happens next: staff will return ordinances for second reading in the next meeting cycle, and planned ASR and SDC projects will proceed through design and funding stages as appropriate.