Waterway Issues - Paddlers of Central Oregon

"The Park and Recreation District Maintains over 25 miles of trails throughout out community. Trails are an important part of the local lifestyle. Trails follow the river, connect parks and neighborhoods and provide a safe way to travel through Bend, away from traffic. If you value out community trail system and enjoy working outdoors you might consider joining others in adopting a section of trail. When you adopt a section of trail you will be asked to do general maintenance and clean-up. Duties often include weeding, picking up garbage and watching for unsafe conditions. Just a few hours of your time each month can greatly assist with the enormous job of maintaining our ever-increasing network of trails. Call 388-5434 for details."

So, should POCO volunteer to adopt a section of the RIVER TRAIL?

From the SOLV Adopt-A-River web page:

Oregon Adopt-A-River helps volunteers clean up and preserve Oregon waterways, and learn the importance of watershed health and a good stewardship ethic. Volunteers adopt their favorite stretch of waterway (river, lake, or stream) anywhere in the state of Oregon. Volunteers generally adopt a minimum of two miles of waterway and do cleanup projects twice a year for two years. Many volunteers do much more!

More than 1,000 miles of river have been adopted by almost 3,000 volunteers. Adoptions cover the entire state including sections of the Sandy, Willamette, Columbia, Clackamas, Salmon, Umpqua, Powder, Deschutes, Rogue, North and South Santiam, Siletz, Coquille, Molalla and John Day Rivers. Many smaller creeks have been adopted as well.

The program offers free materials, including watershed health information, a step-by-step guide to planning a safe and effective cleanup, sample forms and checklists, a resource guide, garbage collection bags, stickers, window decals, T-shirts and program guidance. An adoption is entered in the Oregon River Registry, and volunteer groups receive an adoption certificate and recognition. The program is a broad-based stewardship effort created by the 1993 Oregon Legislature, and is administered by SOLV in partnership with the Oregon State Marine Board. Other state and federal agencies and corporations support the program as well.

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Open house for Mt. Washington bridge project - (November 1, 2004)
The City of Bend is holding an open house to share information and invite comments about the design plans for the Mt. Washington Drive Bridge Replacement project. The project also includes safety and capacity improvements to the intersection of Mt. Washington Drive / Third Street / Butler Market Road.

The Open House is scheduled for Monday, November 8. Citizens are invited to attend any time beginning at 6:30 p.m. until 8:30 p.m. The location is at the Central Oregon Environmental Center, located at 16 NW Kansas Street in the Audubon Room.

The City of Bend is planning to replace the Mt. Washington Bridge across the Deschutes River to correct capacity and safety concerns. Preliminary plans and illustrations will be available for review. City staff and the city�s consultants will be on hand for questions and comments. Parking is available on-street and at the City lot located one lot west of the Center. Attendees are asked not to park on the gravel lot on the corner of Lava and Georgia.
Date: Monday, November 8, 2004
Time: 6:30 to 8:30 PM.
Location: Central Oregon Environmental Center,16 NW Kansas Street, Audubon Room

For additional information about the meeting, please contact Karen Swirsky, David Evans and Associates, Inc. at 389-7614 or kls@deainc.com.

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Tumalo Creek Bent Back into Shape

By Lily Raff of The Bulletin - Published: October 15, 2004

Logging trucks rolled through Tumalo Creek 24 years ago and removed the charred remains of a dense spruce forest that was decimated in the 1979 Bridge Creek Fire.

Since then, Tumalo Creek had been left without downed wood and deep root structures to hold its banks in place.

"The river just began unraveling," said Ryan Houston, executive director of the Upper Deschutes Watershed Council.

But this month, thanks to a partnership between the Watershed Council and the U.S. Forest Service, heavy machinery is back in the area � this time to repair the creek.

The Tumalo Creek Restoration Project � also called the Tumalo Creek Bridge to Bridge Restoration � is underway to reshape and stabilize a 2.8-mile stretch of the stream between Skyliner Lodge and Tumalo Falls, about 10 miles west of Bend.

The project will be completed in three phases, ending in spring 2007, with a total projected cost of $912,000.

This year, workers are spending four weeks on a 0.6-mile stretch of the creek that begins about one-quarter mile downstream from Tumalo Falls.

Since 1980, floods and other flow changes that are natural to Tumalo Creek have caused unnatural changes in the shape of the stream.

The banks of the creek have eroded, making the streambed wider and more shallow. Few areas are left where the water is deep, slow-moving and cold � the favorite conditions for native rainbow trout.

Between 2001 and 2002, part of Tumalo Creek actually "jumped" out of its streambed and into a new channel, said Louis Wasniewski, a hydrologist for Deschutes National Forest who spent the past year redesigning Tumalo Creek.

"Because the stream is migrating so fast, riparian vegetation has not had a chance to really take root," he said.

It would take hundreds of years for the stream to stabilize naturally, he added.

That's why on a recent morning, two full-sized excavators, one skidder and one loader were driving in and out of the creek, literally piecing the streambed back together. Skidders and loaders are machines used to pick up and move big, heavy objects like logs and boulders.

Wasniewski redesigned the creek using surveys of similar, undamaged creeks as well as photos of the creek prior to 1979.

His first objective, he said, was to achieve stability. His second objective was to create improved fish habitat.

To help achieve both goals, contractors are weaving big trees together to create "logjams" that are then embedded in the banks of the outer edges of a stream curve.

The logjams help stabilize the banks of the creek and provide cover for fish.

Contractors are also smoothing out curves in the creek that have eroded into right angles. This slows the flow of water, prevents further erosion and creates calm pools for fish.

Excavators are being used to build "gravel bars" along the inside banks of the curves. During floods or spring snowmelts, water can spill out over the gravel without eroding the streambed.

The improved creek will contain a diverse system of alternating rapids and pools that the proj-ect managers hope will hold up for years.

"We want the system to be able to maintain itself, even in a 10 or 25-year flood," Houston said. "And Murphy's Law says that the 25-year flood will be next year."

For now, human engineering offers the fragile creek's only hope of staying in place.

"That's what we need in the system," Wasniewski said, pointing to the sun-bleached stumps of old-growth spruce that still dot the hillside next to the creek. "And it'll get back there. It just takes time."

Although they concede that salvage logging is one of the reasons this project is so needed, agency officials say the damage incurred by Tumalo Creek is not caused by all salvage logging projects.

Salvage logging is the commercial harvest of trees killed or otherwise damaged in fire.

According to Jim Schlaich, forester for the Bend-Fort Rock Ranger District, salvage logging 25 years ago meant removing every last scrap of wood in a burned area.

But foresters now know better, he said.

"If we were logging that area now, we'd have a 300-foot no-harvest area along the entire creek," Schlaich said.

Houston, of the Upper Deschutes Watershed Council, agreed.

"If the burn had happened today, and the salvage logging had happened today, we probably wouldn't be doing this project," he said.

Schlaich said other aspects of forest and river management have also changed.

"The bizarre thing is, back then, we actually paid people to go down there and remove big wood," he said. "The thinking was, you've got this big, massive dead tree in there, and how could that be doing any good?"

Now, hydrologists like Wasniewski spend a lot of time planning and building logjams like the ones they removed 25 years ago.

"What we're trying to do is think in the long term," Wasniewski said of his plan for Tumalo Creek.

Once the logjams he builds break up and wash away � probably in 50 years or so � the 25-year-old trees growing on the banks of the creek will either have developed strong root systems to hold the banks in place or they will fall into the river and create natural logjams.

With improved fish habitat and stable streambeds, native fish and vegetation populations will eventually restore themselves.

"We need to get over a hump, essentially," Houston said.

To help jumpstart the regrowth, the project managers will call on volunteers to plant about 40,000 native plants alongside the creek.

The city of Bend has contributed $150,000 to the project, and the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board has contributed $183,000. The National Forest Foundation is expected to give $319,000, and the Deschutes Mitigation and Enhancement Fund is expected to give $35,000.

In-kind donations worth a total of $225,000 have been pledged from the city of Bend, Summit High School, Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and Hap Taylor and Sons.

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Excellent Newport Bridge Replacement Project Information Website here

Work Around Newport Avenue Bridge (press release Oct. 29, 2004)

The City of Bend will be conducting night work on and near the Newport Avenue Bridge between the hours of 7:00 pm and 7:00 am on Monday, November 1, 2004 through 7:00 am Thursday morning, November 4, 2004. Newport Avenue will remain open to two-way traffic.

The purpose for this night work is to conduct borings for samples of the subsurface materials under the existing Newport Bridge. This information is an important component of the design work for the replacement bridge.

The construction of the Newport Avenue Bridge will take place in late 2005 and 2006.

Public meetings on the design will be held during the next several months, with the first meeting scheduled for November 10th at 6:00 pm in the Kenwood Elementary School Gymnasium.

For more information contact Deborah Hogan at (541) 330-4029.

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Council considers solutions to Mirror Pond silt

By Eric Flowers of The Bulletin - Published: November 24, 2004

Bend's signature river feature, Mirror Pond, may get a dramatic makeover under a plan being considered by the city council.

There is a range of options for dealing with sedimentation problems in Mirror Pond, and the city council hasn't endorsed any of them yet.

Alternatives vary, from doing nothing to allowing wetland areas to develop along the edges of Mirror Pond to dredging the entire pond. A compromise might include some dredging coupled with restoration, including the active development of wetlands.

All options have either political or environmental drawbacks.

Even so, a consensus has emerged among the council that it is time to map a strategy for dealing with Mirror Pond.

"The pond means a lot to most members of this community � it's a real signature of Bend," said Dave Malkin, who supports restoring the pond by removing sediment.

But dredging has environmental drawbacks. It stirs up sediments that wash farther downstream. Water quality can suffer and fish habitat could potentially be hurt by additional sediment, said Ryan Houston, Upper Deschutes Watershed Council executive director.

It's also expensive.

There have been no reliable estimates of what it might cost for a full-scale dredging in Mirror Pond, but Houston guessed that it could cost as much as $2 million.

Houston, whose organization specializes in river restoration projects on the Deschutes, has suggested that the Watershed Council, the city and Bend Metro Park and Recreation District spearhead an effort to bring key stakeholders together. The group would look at alternatives for the river and Mirror Pond.

The group would consist of community members, river experts, public agency representatives and anyone else with an interest in the river, said Houston.

The idea would be to meld science with politics and develop a proposal that could be sold to the public at large.

Some councilors are interested in exploring that type of approach, especially if it provides more detailed information about costs and environmental concerns.

"I'm in favor of the process," said Councilor John Hummel. "You have to have everyone at the table so you can figure out what is best for the community."

Hummel said he favors some type of compromise between dredging from bank to bank and full restoration of the historic river channel with wetlands development.

But finding a balance on what is sure to prove a lightning rod issue will be a challenge, Hummel acknowledged.

"I think a lot of people think it's an either-or proposition," he said. "People think you either have it stay as it is or you're going to have a roaring river through town, and they pick which one they want and dig in their heels."

Houston agreed that some type of compromise will be necessary to satisfy the community's diverse interests and opinions about the river.

"Those are the shades of gray between black and white," Houston said. "On one end of the spectrum there is dredging, on the other do nothing. Somewhere in between there is a balanced approach."

The issue of managing Mirror Pond has been slowing gathering steam as sediment begins to choke out the pond.

It's not uncommon in the summer to see children wading into the middle of the pond in water no deeper than their ankles.

The sediment problem starts at Wickiup Reservoir where river flows are managed year round for irrigation. Low winter flows and unnaturally high summer flows promote erosion that contributes heavily to the sedimentation issues in Mirror Pond, Houston said.

In Bend, where sediment gathers behind a series of dams, the river is adjusting to the sediments. For example, in Mirror Pond the river is carving a new channel flanked by a series of mud flats that will ultimately evolve into wetlands.

That's not necessarily a bad thing for the river, said Houston.

The deeper channel provides better fish habitat. Wetlands can benefit other wildlife while serving as a filter for storm water runoff � another issue which the city is currently trying to address.

But the idea of urban wetlands supplanting the sanitized version of Mirror Pond, gets mixed reviews.

"I'm really conflicted about that," said Counilor Linda Johnson

"There is a part of me that understands nature is always going to have it's way," she added. "We can muck around with dredging, but no matter what we do nature is going to find a way around it."

Johnson said she supports a public process that will put all the information on the table for a communitywide decision.

"This is one of those issues I think the council would be very cautious about putting its own agenda out," she said.

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