Waterblog

When you’re out walking, paddling, bird watching and otherwise enjoying The Intertwine, you probably notice some amazing natural gems, as well as some signals that all is not well with nature in our urban environment.

For example, the Willamette River in Portland is now safe for recreation most of the year. Osprey, eagles and herons soar right through downtown. On the other hand, this summer we saw Chinook salmon dying in the river’s warm water.

Our region’s parks and natural areas are some of the best in the nation, and Portland ranks as a Top City for Wildlife. But a local bird, the streaked horned lark, recently made the list of threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.

Do you ever find yourself wondering how it all adds up? How would the Willamette River or Tryon Creek rate on a grade scale? 

This year, the City of Portland launched its first set of Watershed Report Cards. The goal is to take reams of complicated scientific data and roll it into at-a-glance grades that can help Portlanders understand current conditions in their local watersheds.

We’ve long had local goals and policies -- and strong public advocacy -- for our rivers and streams. Healthy watersheds are good for people, fish and wildlife. With Watershed Report Cards, we now have a better way to show where we are in meeting those goals, to track changes in watershed conditions over time, and to inform conversations about where we want to go as a community.

The City of Portland and many of our partners have been monitoring and tracking things like water quality, tree canopy and fish populations for many years. But, we had different types of information for different areas and purposes, making it hard to compare data over time and across the city. In 2010, Portland started a new citywide monitoring program with a consistent, efficient and cost-savings approach to measuring and tracking watershed conditions. Information from this monitoring is behind many of the grades in the new report cards.

Portland is not alone in this effort. Watershed report cards are an increasingly common tool used by cities and regions to communicate with the public and policy makers. Report cards, indices and other types of “dashboards” can help illustrate complex environmental issues, what’s working, and where we need to do more. Chesapeake Bay and Ontario, Canada are using watershed report cards. Puget Sound has a Vital Signs dashboard. An initial report card is underway for the Mississippi River. Here in Oregon, the Willamette River Initiative is creating a report card for the entire Willamette River, slated for release later this year.

Just like the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or your 5th grader’s report card, watershed report cards and indices aren’t perfect. They don’t tell the whole story. But, they’re one way to help spur the conversation. The grades in Portland’s Watershed Report Cards tell us where we are now and give us a baseline to track against in future years. Although we don’t yet have trend data for multiple years, we can compare the information to other historical data sources and see where we’ve already made progress —nitrogen levels in the Willamette River and Columbia Slough, for example.

The report cards can help inform local policies, and help Portlanders understand where actions like planting trees and reducing the use of pesticides fit in. The report cards also support work with our partners in the region. After all, every one of “Portland’s” watersheds crosses boundaries into neighboring cities and counties.

Some highlights from the initial report cards: 

Like trails, streams need to be connected. Stream connectivity grades range from Bs to a D. Portland has nearly 300 miles of rivers and streams in the city, but they’re not all connected and flowing freely. Some, like Johnson Creek and its tributaries, receive relatively good scores for connectivity. However, many streams that used to flow to the Willamette River from the city’s buttes and hills now run through pipes and culverts to reach the river, or they’re buried under development and largely lost, like Tanner Creek.

Daylighting streams where we can – like at Spring Garden Park – and reconnecting streams to their floodplains, like at Foster Floodplain Natural Area, help restore natural systems, improve water quality, and reduce flood impacts on property.

We’ve come a long way on water quality, and we have a long way still to go. Overall water quality grades are “fair” across most watersheds, but certain individual indicators have very good scores and others have very poor scores. Portland conquered a major challenge, controlling combined sewer overflows, that many cities are just starting to tackle. E. coli bacteria and nitrogen grades get As in the Willamette River and Columbia Slough largely as a result of this work and efforts to move away from septic systems.

However, pollution from homes, businesses and streets continues to be a problem for all of Portland’s streams and rivers. Stormwater runoff that carries pollutants like copper from car brakes and sediment into streams is our challenge now. This requires ongoing public investment in our stormwater infrastructure, as well as actions by individual Portlanders. Water temperature and mercury are also significant problems, with regional and global causes. Some of these pollutants don’t impact human contact with the water, but are bad for migratory salmon, the food chain, and for people who rely on resident fish to feed their families.

We have some great habitat in Portland, but sometimes fish and wildlife can’t get to it. Grades for habitat run the gamut, depending on the watershed, but grades for fish and wildlife are poor citywide. Gems like Forest Park, Smith and Bybee Lakes and Crystal Springs Creek are anchors of our local ecosystem. They support clean water and diverse fish and wildlife in the city, not to mention great recreation opportunities. But, culverts block migratory salmon from some of the best stream habitat, like Tryon Creek. Stream and riverbanks are armored with concrete or missing buffers of plants and trees. Factors like this make it hard for native fish and wildlife to thrive.

Removing or replacing culverts with modern designs (like at Crystal Springs), planting trees in neighborhoods and along stream banks, and protecting habitat connections through developed areas are actions that will help improve these grades.

New information about Portland’s Watershed Report Cards will be available periodically on our website: www.portlandoregon.gov/bes/ReportCards. You can keep up on city projects and community events for watershed health on the CityGreen Blog and on Facebook @CityGreenPortland.

For the past century, cities have been built to encourage automobile traffic. This model generally excludes green spaces, which are so vital for our mental health and spiritual well-being. What I find so thrilling about the Portland area—and the work of The Intertwine partners in particular—is using green space as the basis for building a new transportation paradigm for non-motorized travel.

I’ve lived in several cities and have found that parks and trails are something you use your auto—rather than your legs—to reach. Many cities are desperately seeking solutions to change this transportation paradigm, and Portland is leading the way. I’m excited to be part of that.

When I moved here recently to take my job with the Johnson Creek Watershed Council, which I started in February, I came from the rural Applegate Valley in southern Oregon. Walking out my back door into the woods, and running or hiking trails, is part of who I am. So is stream and forest restoration, my career for the past 24 years. I am relieved that green spaces are still close by.

It comes as a welcome surprise, then, that the focus of my new work—Johnson Creek—lies in such an important green-space corridor. Paralleling and crossing the pedestrian/bicyclist Springwater Corridor for so many miles, this stream connects such green gems as the Tideman-Johnson Natural Area, Brookside and Beggars Tick wetlands, and Powell Butte Nature Park.  Take a detour on the Gresham-Fairview Trail and you’ll pass through and by several more parks. The beauty of this network is how far you can travel without a combustion engine and still be in green space.

In the past 20 years, millions of dollars have been invested in restoration of the Johnson Creek stream network and its riparian forest. The results are evident. For such an urbanized watershed, Johnson Creek is unique in our area in serving as a spawning ground for threatened coho salmon. Chinook salmon, steelhead trout, and cutthroat trout also spawn here. Beaver build dams in Johnson Creek.  

Perhaps the biggest challenge for fish that spawn in our watershed is swimming through culverts. In a recent surveying project, our Council documented that 202 of 273 stream crossings interfered with fish migration. One of the top priorities in our new 10-year action plan is to address some of these fish passage issues. For me, one of the most thrilling streamside experiences is to watch salmon spawn. We’d like more people to have that experience. 

There’s a palpable excitement and spirit of volunteerism in our metro area around participating in this restoration effort. Last year, more than 1,300 individuals volunteered to plant trees, remove invasive vegetation, monitor stream conditions and clean up garbage in the Johnson Creek stream corridor through our Council’s projects. To me, this groundswell speaks not only to the hunger to be around healthy natural areas, but to be part of a community that shares these values, as well.

Through an existing bond measure, new green-space acquisitions continue all over our area. Johnson Creek has certainly benefited! I’m excited and proud to be part of such a large and cooperative effort to restore streams and green spaces in the Johnson Creek Watershed. I look forward to exploring them.

With credit and a humble apology, I take the title of Norman Maclean’s book A River Runs Through It and strive to make it more personal and inclusive by replacing “It” with “Us.”

For we, the people who now call Oregon home, should have a personal relationship with the many river arteries that run through our state: the Deschutes, John Day, Klamath, Malheur, Columbia, Trask, Pudding, Wilson -- the list goes on.

But no river has been altered, used, abused, and loved like the Willamette.

Call it the happenstance of human migration, the mistakes of our mothers and fathers, progress, or opportunity; this river, which many of us see each day, has defined where we live.

What the Willamette has seen; from the earliest human settlements thousands of years ago, to the massive and repeated Missoula Floods, where the depth of water rose up to what is now the highest floors of our Portland bank towers, to the commerce and recreation of the recent past -- this river was and does shape our lives.

As the Willamette Valley changed, so did the river. Where once grasslands, oak savannas, meanders and floodplains made for a natural balance of nature, our river has now has been “tamed” into a channel.

Over the “modern” years, it has been used as a garbage dump, toilet, a place where “out of sight, out of mind” was the operating procedure, manifested by either letting waste materials leach into the soils adjacent to the waterway, or by simply pouring it directly into the water.

Such was the accepted practice for almost 100 years.

We have used the Willamette for commerce, manufacturing, ship-building, industry and recreation. Yet for centuries, this river was a major source of life giving food and materials to the Native Americans. You can see where the uses conflicted with one another.

Which brings us to where we are now. How do we rectify past abuses that stemmed from industrial progress? How do we go forward?

There is hope. Tribal Nations, environmental and recreational organizations, large and small companies, government agencies and neighbors -- all share a common goal: to bring the lower Willamette back to a healthy state.

We know that we will never be able to rewind history and arrive at where the river was before we came here. But, working together, we can create a new legacy where past ills are identified, worked on, and corrected.

For over 18 years, I had the honor of serving Oregon as the executive director of Governor Tom McCall’s non-profit organization, SOLVE.

One of my favorite quotes of all time came from this remarkable lover of his adopted state. Tom McCall proclaimed, “Heroes are not giant statues, framed against a red sky. They are people who say, “this is my community and it is my responsibility to make it better.”

And so, I extend a heartfelt invitation to become a hero for your Oregon.

In 2013, I was approached by the Port of Portland to be involved in an ambitious, public undertaking. It was not only to help tell the story of the Willamette, but also to engage us, the people, in an effort to become aware and take part in this process of restoration by creating a series of podcasts. Together, we interviewed over 40 representatives associated with the river in some way. The series -- called "One River, Many Voices" -- is now available free on iTunes.

For me, this has been and continues to be a personal, educational journey. Now, it's my hope that you will take an opportunity to listen to the series and get involved as the remediation process progresses. We owe it to our families, our neighbors and ourselves to become part of the Willamette's next chapter.

For the past year, I’ve been the project manager for the Walker Macy consultant team on the Willamette Falls Legacy Project. This has easily been the most rewarding project of my career.

Why is this project so meaningful to me, my team, and our many incredibly committed public partners? Because of what it represents for our region and state: for the first time in 150 years, Oregonians will have the opportunity to rediscover the cultural and scenic treasure that is Willamette Falls.

We believe the project site, the 22-acre former Blue Heron paper mill in Oregon City, could someday serve as an economic engine, a waterfront destination, a unique habitat, a window into Oregon’s past – and a bold step into our future.

Located right next to Willamette Falls (the largest waterfall in the Pacific Northwest), this site was an important cultural and gathering place for Native American tribes long before it was a paper mill. The Oregon Trail literally ended here, with migrants collecting their land claims within sight of the roaring falls. And throughout the 1800s, the Falls made history by generating energy for Oregon’s early industries and cities and fueling the nation’s first long-distance electrical power transmission, including the power that lit the 1903 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition.

The former mill is for sale, but the site’s complexity and risks have required a careful and methodical transition to new uses. With the help of our consulting team, Oregon City, Clackamas County, Metro, the State of Oregon, and the property’s bankruptcy trustee, we have been working closely over the past year to develop a vision and master plan for the site.

By rezoning and providing certainty for investors, the master plan framework defines how the area can be transformed – for economic redevelopment, healthy habitats, and historical and cultural interpretation. Throughout this year-long process, we have also taken great care to make sure the plan serves to reconnect all of you with Willamette Falls – first and most importantly, by providing for public access along the waterfront.

The Riverwalk we've proposed in the master plan would be a catalyst for economic development in Oregon City, and also enhance the site's development value by demonstrating the public’s commitment to improvements. It would attract visitors and generate momentum for continued implementation of the master plan.

And last but not least, the Riverwalk would also be an important link in The Intertwine, connecting downtown Oregon City via a rail-trail with Metro’s Canemah Bluffs Natural Area, which is also undergoing ecological restoration and public access improvements. The project's partners recently agreed to seek sources of funding to design the Riverwalk – so visible change will soon be coming to this place.

You can help shape that change, by joining our next public open house for the Vision and Master Plan on April 21st. Oregon City staff will be there to discuss the proposed plan, answer questions, and hear public feedback. This is a casual opportunity to see what’s new with the project and learn about next steps. If you are unable to attend, please visit the project’s website, where you can find a great deal of project information, and sign up for public tours.

Through my work over the past year, I've been privileged to spend countless hours exploring the waterfront by Willamette Falls, a place that's been accessible to very few people over the past century and a half.

But soon, you, like me, will have the opportunity to rediscover Willamette Falls. Believe me — it’s unforgettable.