Portland Water Bureau Source

In October, 2008 the City entered into a wholesale water supply agreement with the City of Portland. The agreement allows Sandy to obtain a minimum of 500,000 gallons per day up to a maximum of 3 million gallons per day from this source.  This source supplements the Brownell Springs and Alder Creek sources which we still use.

The PWB source was placed into service in April 2014 and has been supplying an average of 500,000 gallons per day. During the fall, winter and spring this source supplies about 50% of the City's needs. During the summer when water demand is higher more water is drawn from Alder Creek and Brownell Springs and the PWB source makes up about 1/3rd of our supply.

The connection to the Portland Water Bureau provides redundancy in case of emergencies or natural disaster and reduces our reliance on a single transmission line in Hwy 26 for Sandy's entire water supply.

In addition to water rights from Brownell Springs and on Alder Creek the City holds a permit to withdraw up to 25 CFS (cubic feet per second - roughly 16 million gallons per day) of water from the Salmon River near the Mt. Hood National Forest Boundary. As part of the Marmot Dam Decommissioning Project the City agreed to limit future withdrawal from the Salmon River to 16.3 CFS (about 10.5 million gallons per day).