Out along the North Santiam River as it passes just south of Stayton on its way to the confluence with the South Santiam River at Jefferson lies a complicated highway-like interchange of water infrastructure, canals, ditches and ponds
A small dam here routes water to Salem. A small dam there routes water to the Santiam Water Control District, which largely serves agricultural clients. Others route water to the city of Stayton.
All three systems are built to accommodate some stress and change, wet years and dry years. But what might be coming down the pike as early as this fall could test these water systems like never before.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been ordered by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to begin a fall drawdown of Detroit Lake to ease passage of threatened fish stocks. A similar drawdown on the South Santiam in 2023 and 2024 led to catastrophic deaths of kokanee in the Green Peter Reservoir watershed. High turbidity and low water quality issues plagued Sweet Home, Lebanon and communities further downstream in the Albany-Millersburg area.
Stayton officials told Our Town that the high turbidity experienced on the South Santiam likely would overwhelm the sand bed filters the city uses to treat water for community use. Normal turbidity levels in Stayton’s water are rated a 5 on the Nephelometric Turbidity Units scale (quick explainer: the higher the turbidity the more soil and sediment there is in the water). City officials say that the system can handle 10 to 20 in short bursts, but the numbers ranged from 200 to 3,000 on the South Santiam.
Such a change in water quality, said City Manager Julia Hajduk, “would quickly destroy our filters, within days.”
Adds interim Public Works Director Barry Buchanan, “we can manage for a couple of days, then we’re out of water.”
No water for drinking, bathing, laundry, dishes, flushing, house plants – and dialysis machines – in a city of more than 8,000 people.
Stayton is facing two scenarios, both bad. In the first, the city could try to clean the filters, but such an effort, given the volume of water we are talking about, would likely result in a finger-in-the-dike proposition. The second scenario, the destruction of the filters, would mean shutting down the system, no water, and repair and upgrade costs in the millions of dollars.
Downstream in Salem, the capital city with nearly 180,000 residents, an aquifer storage and recovery system (translation: underground reservoir) is available, and the city also can purchase water from Keizer.
Hajduk: “We would have two days of water.”
Buchanan: “Salem would have (about) 80.”
Stayton could truck in water, but it would take a lot of trucks to offset the 1.5 million to 2 million gallons per day of average use. Officials with the Corps of Engineers “say it is going to be better than in the South Santiam,” Hajduk said, but no one will know if that is true until they do the drawdown at Detroit.
One unanswered question, among many, is when the drawdown will occur? The 2024 presidential election gunked things up a bit.
Erik Petersen, the project manager for the Corps, told Our Town “our timelines for decisions were made more complicated with the change in administration as senior (Corps) leadership remains in transition. While we can’t commit to timing, we can assure you that we are raising this issue as an important priority. We can also commit to communicating with the public as soon as we have a path forward.”
Fall is six months away. That’s a difficult deadline. A decision not to draw down until the fall of 2026 would give Stayton and other water users up to 12 additional months to work on solutions.
“There is so much we don’t know,” Buchanan said. “The longer it goes, the less likely it is that it will happen.”
“Our ask,” Hajduk said, “is first, don’t do it (the drawdown). But if you do, give us time to mitigate it. It is so catastrophic that I don’t think anyone would let us do something like that. If it does happen, hopefully the state or the federal government will give us resources to mitigate.”
For more information on the Stayton water situation go to https://www.staytonoregon.gov/page/resources_drawdown
