Portland is in the early construction phase of a costly $2.1 billion water filtration system officials say needs to be completed by fall of 2027 to comply with federal and state rules.
But a recent state board of appeals decision may delay that timeline. Nearby residents and farm groups, who have long opposed the project, see this as a win.

FILE - Water tanks owned by Pleasant Home Water District, near the site proposed by the Portland Water Bureau for a new water filtration facility, Dec. 3, 2019. The site is a 94-acre property located in Multnomah County on the border of Clackamas County.
Kaylee Domzalski / OPB
In a Wednesday ruling, Oregon’s Land Use Board of Appeals, or LUBA, sent back a land use decision to Multnomah County planning officials, ruling the project’s natural resources impact wasn’t “sufficiently evaluated.”
“Based on what we’ve heard from our consultation with our land use attorney, it’s really related to [LUBA] asking the county to further clarify their interpretation of what qualifies as a natural resource under their code,” said Jodie Inman, Portland Water Bureau’s chief engineer.
Construction of the water filtration facility began in the summer of 2024 at a 94-acre site east of Gresham — to the dismay of local residents and some farmers. For years, Portland officials have stressed the facility needs to be up and running by September 2027 to comply with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s limits on cryptosporidium, a fecal contaminant officials say comes from wildlife in the Bull Run Watershed — where Portland gets its municipal water.
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Portland Water Bureau applied for and was approved for a conditional-use permit to build the drinking water facility and a communications tower at the site. The proposal was approved in 2023 by Multnomah County planning officials.
That decision was appealed to LUBA by a coalition of community and agricultural groups. Those groups, which include 1000 Friends of Oregon and the Oregon Association of Nurseries, argued the city did not make a clear enough case for needing to build on land zoned for agricultural use. They also said the city failed to identify the impacts of construction on nearby farms.
In a 130-page decision, LUBA board members rejected some of those arguments. Despite that, some farm groups still say this is a win.
“I welcome this decision by LUBA,” Jeff Stone, the executive director of the Oregon Association of Nurseries, said in a statement. “To site a water treatment plant requires a proper planning process, which the Portland Water Bureau did not do. We support alternative options. More than 250 nurseries were being harmed by building this costly project.”
For now, Inman said the city has not received a stop work order from the county and will continue to work at the site, though it’s unclear what the impact of this decision will have on the construction timeline.
“There’s some additional clarity that needs to be understood of what a [LUBA] remand might look like as far as the timeline,” she said.
Multnomah County planning officials have a choice to either appeal the board’s decision or work with LUBA to provide information to correct the board’s concerns, Inman said.
“The county will determine how they want to address the LUBA finding,” she said. “And then based on that, we as the applicant will need to participate in the process as they are asked. So if they want additional material, if they want additional information about us as the applicant, if they want to have hearings, whatever they wanna do, then we would participate in that process.”