Sewer Agency’s Own Pipes Went To Pot

Metro officials are flushed with surprise.

The regional governmental body that oversees the Portland area’s recycling and stream protection efforts discovered in December that two of its first-floor bathrooms emptied directly into the Willamette River, bypassing the city’s sewage treatment system.

Metro immediately shut down the bathrooms and ordered a portable lavatory.

“This could happen to anybody, and there’s a little bit of irony that we, along with everybody else, are concerned with clean water,” Metro Executive Mike Burton said.

The problem can be traced to the original 1929 construction of the building, which served as a Sears department store.

Metro took over the building in the early 1990s.

But the problem wasn’t found until a 6-foot sewer pipe, built in 1917, ruptured. Raw sewage found during repair work was traced to Metro.

The pipe predated the city’s sewage treatment plant. When other sewer lines were hooked up in the 1940s and ‘50s, it apparently was missed.

Eric Sten, head of the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services, said he didn’t know if the city inspected Metro’s remodeling of the building in the 1990s, or whether the city decided “a big-thinking agency like Metro can figure out that a toilet goes on a toilet pipe.”

But Sten said the city might have made the mistake.

“If it’s our fault, I apologize,” he said.