The Dalles City Council met last night, and covered a number of subjects. The largest item on the agenda was the approval of an engineering contract for a replacement of the Dog River Pipeline. Many people do not realize that a significant percentage of the city’s water comes from the Dog River through a more than century old three foot wooden pipeline with serious leakage problems. The city has been working on an upgrade for a number of years, as the three and a half mile pipeline travels through a number of jurisdictions and involves a number of agencies, as city public works director Dave Anderson explained:
“This project specifically needs to coordinate and seek approvals from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife for fish screenings and passage systems, Oregon Division of State Lands and Army Corps of Engineers for some in-water work permits, Oregon State Historical Preservation Office for some historic preservation elements of the project and the US Forest Service and recreational groups to minimize the impact to users since we’re gonna be doing this project in close proximity to a very heavily used recreational trail on the forest.”
Council members awarded the $1.8 million dollar engineering contract to Jacobs Engineering Group of Portland.
Councilors also approved a Chamber of Commerce budget for tourism promotion that was lower than the previous year due to the fact that the money comes from a portion of the hotel and motel room room tax charged by the city which was down due to the pandemic reducing travel. The Chamber was plenty busy last year distributing lots of personal protective equipment, or PPE, as Executive Director Lisa Farquharson explained:
“The first distribution was $600,000 worth of supplies. We did that in four separate distributions to equal 580 separate orders and then we have an upcoming distribution of the final shipment of PPE which is another $450,000 worth of supplies and right now we presently have 170 orders for that.”
In other business, councilors easily approved the request of several property owners to annex into the city.
04/26 The Dalles City Council recap
