City to purchase sewer truck

In the face of plugged dry wells and dirty catch basins, the City of Sisters is purchasing a long-awaited sewer truck. The truck will speed up many tasks, including flushing sewer lines and cleaning dirt, cinders, leaves and pine needles out of the city's catch basins and dry wells.

The City of Sisters has over 200 catch basins and dry wells in the streets and most of them have never been cleaned, Gary Frazee, public works director, said in a staff report for the City Council in its meeting on Thursday, December 11.

The public works department has been casually looking for a sewer truck since construction began on the new sewer in 2000. In the last three months, Frazee received three proposals for trucks.

Frazee is recommending the city purchase one of two trucks, depending on the price.

"Both trucks would do the job City of Sisters needs to do, so we had to weigh the pros and cons of both," Frazee said.

One truck, a Vac Con on a 1993 International Chassis, was previously owned by the City of Salem and recently sent to state surplus, to be sold to the highest bidder. Frazee said he is waiting to see if the truck will be sold at a price below $50,000.

The other truck is a newly-painted Vactor on a 1989 Ford Chassis from Ben Ko Matic in Portland, at a price of $67,000.

While the Vac Con truck will most likely be cheaper, Vactor trucks have additional features which would help routine work at the city.

Frazee said a Vactor could be used to clean the water feature at Barclay Park.

"Last week, I had to drain the water to clean the pond," he wrote in his report. "The water was getting dirty from all the leaves. It took over four hours to drain the pond with a little submersible pump, but with the Jetter/Vactor truck, we could drain that pond in minutes."

Frazee said in the staff report Jetter/Vactor trucks are multi-task capable and can use high pressure water and vacuum to locate water leaks and utilities.

Prineville, Redmond and Bend all use Vactor sewer trucks for their sewer maintenance.

The City of Sisters currently rents a water truck from Barclay Contractors every three months for $55 an hour to flush the sewer lines, according to the staff report. Last time, the flushing cost $660 for 12 hours, which would total $2,640 per year.

A sewer truck would also be used to pump out the main pump station on Rope Street, according to the report. The city currently pays George's Septic over $2,000 annually to perform the task every four to six weeks.