March 24, 2026 – (PDF)
Lauren Simms
Lakeview Resident and Consumer
Dear Lauren
Regarding the original 2025 Consumer Confidence Report (CCR) for the Town of Lakeview drinking water system. Your concerns and questions are entirely appropriate. In fact, the first result of your inquiry was to correct the original posting to ensure that the information which we published was accurate as possible due to past failure to conduct the required testing.
Regarding testing data presented.
As far as we have been able to determine, the Town of Lakeview failed to continue to provide the required water testing starting in 2022. This lapse was under previous administration and although we had a Public Works Director that was required by his job description to ensure that required testing take place, it was not. It was only after July 2025 that some of the required testing was reinstated. Upon meeting with Russell Kazmierczak of the Oregon Health Authority in September of 2025, the Town did we take steps to meet testing requirements. This was complicated by the absence of qualified staff in our Public Works Department to perform the water testing as required. We have since hired outside contractors to do both our wastewater testing and potable water testing. We now are monitoring our potable water testing to ensure that we meet the statewide requirements. We recently contracted with Darryl Anderson, as our Supervising Engineer of record, to assist us in meeting all requirements for testing within the time periods that are set by state and federal law. Future CCR reports for 2026 will reflect this attempt to keep our citizens well informed on both the quality of our water and reporting accurately all issues with our water in a timely manner with our resident citizens.
There is no reasonable excuse for past administrations to fail to perform the required testing other than neglect and disregard of our obligations. The personnel turnover, financial challenges and revolving
door of Town Managers certainly did not contribute to meeting these standards. All we can do is to acknowledge our past failures and pledge to do better in the future.
What we don’t know.
As previously stated, we know that the testing gap has been on-going since 2022. Prior to that date, the Public Works Directors were routinely testing potable water, and this information was used as part of the justification for securing the water treatment plant money from the State of Oregon. We conducted limited testing in 2025 and more regular testing in 2026. The public works personnel are working with Darryl Anderson to ensure that we are following a protocol for doing town-wide testing on a regular basis and it is my expectation that the 2026 CCR report will be more reflective of the condition of overall water quality and more reliable information for consumers like yourself.
Some of our wells have issues at different times of the year due to groundwater drawdowns during the summer and are taken off-line for that primary reason. One of our wells was taken offline due to high arsenic levels and was determined that no mixing of this water with other more acceptable water quality levels would bring levels down to acceptable drinking water standards.
Regarding Bullard Canyon springs, the Town supported volunteers this summer and fall to restore the overall source conditions to allow us to introduce this high-quality spring water back into our system. There is more work to be done before these springs can be incorporated into our potable water system and inspected by OHA. There are nine distribution boxes that will need to be cleaned, and the entire system shocked by flushing this pipeline with chlorine. A recent test to check on this spring shows that there are organic contaminants (dirt, plant material and other organic compounds) in this system. This water test was posted on the Town website due to great interest in reintroducing this source of water into our system. Additional work is planned for this spring to bring this water source into state and federal compliance.
The Town has signed an agreement with MIDCO to clean and inspect our four water storage tanks which will occur this spring. As soon as this is done, we will flush our distribution lines to clean the main water lines that provide potable water throughout the Town. This has not been done in over two years and contributes to poor water tests. This procedure is intended to be repeated in late fall of 2026
prior to bringing our new water treatment plant on-line so that once this plant is operational, we should have must improve potable water.
Yes, we have had occasional exceedances in certain chemical species such as synthetic and volatile organic compounds at very low levels which were not consistently found in our water supply. Because of more regular and consistent testing by the Town we should be able to record and disclose this information in a more timely and specific manner in the current calendar year.
Water Treatment Plant.
The water treatment plant is currently on-schedule and is slated to be completed by December 2026 and on-line and providing treated water beginning in 2027. All water will likely need to be sent through the water treatment plant including Bullard Canyon Spring water in the future to ensure that all contaminants are removed before sending it through our water distribution system. The plant is funded with a 15-million-dollar grant distributed by Business Oregon. This money will not cover the full cost of the plant so a supplemental budget request will be submitted in March for an additional $800,000 special public works loan to complete construction. This is necessary because all bids exceeded the original award and decisions were made prior to my arrival to the Town to award the bid with the grant resources available.
Oregon Health Authority.
Service line inventory is slowly being documented. It is hopeful that with Darryl Anderson’s assistance we can comply with this requirement in the next 18 months. The status of our service line inventory is approximately 40 percent of the overall system. This is slower than we would like due to limited personnel and constrained financial resources. We are working with Rural Community Action Council, a national non-profit company, to complete a complete asset management plan to document the condition of our overall infrastructure and build a plan for upgrading this distribution system over many years. This work is being done under a grant so while it requires significant local personnel time it is vital for the Town of Lakeview to essentially re-plum our Town.
Regarding lead service lines, we have identified that very few of these service lines have lead sealers. It is estimated that less than six percent of our system may have lead sealing on the joints. The service lines are mostly lead free. The lead sealed pipes are mostly confined to the oldest infrastructure in the Town and most related to our water main lines in the historic part of the Town. We are still uncertain of
the extent of this problem and will not know for sure until we complete our inspections throughout the Town.
The intent is to replace all service lines with poly pipes which was mostly completed in conjunction with our smart water meter replacement project. We are currently in a contract dispute with Sustainability Partnership who provided our smart water meters but did not complete the installation of our smart water meters and service lines. Approximately 180 meters out of approximately 1600 service lines have not been replaced as of this date. Most meters will be installed in the coming year hopefully completing this replacement effort by Spring of 2027. It should be noted that very little lead sealant was used in service lines due to the use of more modern poly material.
Yes, we have received a notice from OHA for our failure to comply with the testing failures which are public information and available to the public. Due to our efforts to bring ourselves into full compliance with all requirements under the clean water drinking act, we have not been fined to date. We will continue to make every effort to meet or exceed those standards in the future, but we still struggle to have the personnel necessary to do all the things we would like to complete but are doing the best we can to comply.
The Town will post water quality information as we collect it, and this will be very important to confirm the effectiveness of our water system clean-up efforts this spring. Please look for this information to be posted both before the clean-up and after the clean-up to determine whether this strategy is having the desired effect.
Thank you so much for your inquiry and we hope these answers to your questions to the extent that we can answer is helpful to your understanding of the status of the Town’s potable water system. The Town is committed to ensuring that testing is conducted regularly from now on and this information will be shared with the public as it is obtained
Respectfully,
Stan Foster
Interim Town Manager