The 10 Barrel Brewing Company has just put the finishing touches on its new 50-barrel brewhouse in northeast Bend. It's a big facility with gleaming, polished steel tanks and just the latest in a series of recent expansions of the booming industry. Next on deck is a new Boneyard Beer brewhouse up the street from 10 Barrel and within the year, at least two more brewhouses are slated to open not far away.

But just as the industry prepares to cement Bend’s standing as a darling in the microbrewing world, city staff are eyeing the goods, too, and preparing to expand an heretofore obscure and sporadically administered sewer fee to breweries across the city. Breweries aren’t the only industry likely to be hit with the charge, which could generate $2 to $3 million a year for the city and is based on the concentration of waste dumped into the sewer system by commercial businesses. But of the potentially affected businesses, breweries will take some of the biggest hits.

Its no secret that irrigation withdrawals have a major impact on stream flows in the Deschutes Basin. From Wickiup Reservoir in the pine forested Cascade foothills south of Bend to the Juniper dotted canyons outside Terrebonne, the rise and fall of the river is dictated less by snow and rain than the opening and closing of steel gates that meter out water to the legions of farmers on the High Desert.

Over the past decade, irrigators, conservation groups, cities and other stakeholders have made major strides in restoring some of the diminished flows. This past summer, flows in the middle Deschutes were as much as four times the summer average recorded for much of the 20^th century when water-thirsty crops and inefficient irrigation methods left little for the river. Much of that restored flow has come as the result of piping projects that allow irrigators to leave some of their conserved water in the river without curtailing their own usage.

Almost two dozen rural post offices slated for closure by the United States Postal Service will remain open, including postal facilities in Brothers, Post, Paulina and Fort Rock.

Sen. Jeff Merkley announced late last week that the Postal Service has agreed that closing the facilities would place undue hardship on rural residents who rely on the post offices for personal and professional purposes.

The Source wrote this past year about how the proposed closing would impact people living around Brothers for whom the facility serves both as a means of communication and community. At the time, the postal service was mulling the closure of more than 3,600 post offices around the country, primarily in rural areas. More than 40 of those were located in Oregon.

If you live outside of the magnet school zones and want your child to attend one of the four alternative schools, be prepared to wait in line.

Last Tuesday, despite protest from a number of concerned parents and teachers over the past few months, the members of the Bend-La Pine school board chose to keep in place the current rules that determine how children are admitted to Amity Creek, Highland, Westside Village and east side magnet, Juniper Elementary School.

At the December 13 meeting, board member Beth Bagley made a motion to amend the magnet school zone policy, but her fellow board members failed to second the motion effectively killing any possibility of revising the magnet school admission policy.

The city hears you.

Officials say proposed revisions to the city’s special events code should strike a better balance between business owners, neighbors and event participants alike.  The code dictates how special events, such as bike races and some concerts are conducted.

During the December 7 city council meeting, the issue captured the attention of the city council which was sympathetic to the criticisms levied by the community. Street closures, noise complaints and a lack of public notification were among the “main complaints” highlighted by Bend Police Department’s Steve Esselstyn in his report to the councilors.

The year-end discussion follows a busy event season that produced complaints from both neighbors and business owners. Those issues were highlighted by several flashpoints over the past year, including a raucous listener appreciation concert featuring 80s rockers Night Ranger, whose arena rock set overpowered the outdoor venue at Troy Field. Later, it was bike races that drew the ire of downtown merchants who said back-to-back street closures to facilitate racing hurt their bottom line during the usually lucrative summer tourist season.