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Forest Heights sewage spills into Cedar Mill Creek

On July 26, a sanitary sewer pipe under a street in Forest Heights ruptured and raw sewage poured out, flowing into Kitchen Creek, a small tributary of Cedar Mill Creek.

Forest Heights is in the City of Portland and is served by their Bureau of Environmental Services (BES), which responded to the situation. BES issued an advisory stating: “Maintenance crews stopped the overflow around 11 am, estimating that about 340 gallons was released to the environment in a period of less than two hours. Crews identified the cause as tree roots blocking the main sewer line and cleared the blockage. As a precaution against exposure to bacteria, the public is advised to avoid contact with Cedar Mill Creek for 48 hours.” Sewage from the Forest Heights neighborhood is pumped to one of BES’ treatment plants.

Cedar Mill Creek flows through the heart of our community, from its source in the hills above Jordan Park to the old mill site at the waterfall, past apartments and the wetland, under Highway 26, and on through the Butner neighborhood to the middle of the Nike campus. It joins Beaverton Creek near the intersection of 158th and Jenkins.

Knowing that Cedar Mill Creek flows through several of our popular parks, we tried to contact someone at THPRD so they could post warning signs. It was a hot day, and we worried that folks and their dogs might be wading. We were told that it would be impractical to post temporary signs in all six parks that the creek flows through, and that the sewage would dissipate fairly quickly.

We hope nobody got sick. We posted the information on the Cedar Mill News Facebook page, which has about 2500 followers. The notice reached 2328 people, and was shared by 25 of them. If you use Facebook and want to get timely updates, please like or follow our page.

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