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- Oregon Universities Water News
- Year of Water News
- Oregon Water Events
- Oregon Water News
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Inst. for Water & Watersheds
Oregon State University
234 Strand Ag Hall
Corvallis, OR 97331-2208
Phone: 541-737-9918
iww@oregonstate.edu
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Oregon Universities Water News
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BEST PAPER AWARDEE
Future bottlenecks in international rivers: where transboundary institutions, population growth and hydrological variability intersect, Marloes H.N. Bakker and James A. Duncan, Water International, 42:4, 400-424,
HONOURABLE MENTION AWARDEE
International water conflict and cooperation: challenges and opportunities, Jacob D. Petersen-Perlman, Jennifer C. Veilleux and Aaron T. Wolf, Water International, 42:2, 105-120
All authors previously affiliated with Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database at Oregon State University.
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Fortunately, Oregon has a large community of backcountry skiers, splitboarders, snowshoers, and snowmobilers that don’t mind the cold and who can help. There is a project called Community Snow Observations (CSO), funded by NASA and National Geographic, that seeks to blend the activities of scientists and recreationists to improve our understanding of snow and our ability to predict its behavior.
This crowdsourcing approach to science, or ‘citizen science’ is the ultimate win-win scenario. For the scientists, it is a case of many hands making light work. A large and active backcountry community can collect much more data from many more locations than a small scientific team. For the participants, they increase their understanding of science, and they actually get to help guide the science. With this particular project, you can help NASA without your feet ever leaving the ground!
Getting involved with CSO is easy.
You’ll want to start by visiting their website (communitysnowobs.org) where you can sign up, view tutorials, and find links to the smartphone app you will need.
Read opinion piece connected to article - Not best way to collect snow data
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Talking to the public about climate change has challenged researchers for decades. The science is complex, and the high stakes drive emotional reactions.
That’s why students and faculty in the (University of Oregon) School of Journalism and Communication are seeking new ways to make climate change communication more engaging.
FitzClemen and Foxman are interested in game play as a new method for communicating to the public about issues that are difficult to capture in mainstream news media. Their work is part of a larger body of research into using games to familiarize people with real-life issues.
Check out related games for water summarized by Oregon State University students here.
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Believe it or not, research by Oregon State University found too much organic matter can have a negative effect. Wait. What?
There are the environmental consequences of fertilizer leaching and runoff, the expense and time to buy and apply the compost or other organic matter and, in some cases, plants burn and die from too many nutrients, according to Mykl Nelson, instructor in the OSU Department of Horticulture.
Nelson suspected that urban gardens are over-enriched. After a two-year research project, his thesis panned out. The soil samples Nelson took in 27 gardens averaged 13% organic material; the recommended minimum is 3% to 5%, according to numerous studies, including by Cornell University Extension Service.
Organic matter, Nelson said, correlates with elevated phosphorus and microbial activity. If there are too many nutrients for the plant to use, phosphorous may run off if the soil erodes into waterways. In addition to phosphorus, nitrogen is likely to leach out of the soil unless a slow-release product like feather meal is applied.
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For just under 20 years in the 10th century, the Khmer Empire was ruled from Koh Ker, once a major urban area in what is now Cambodia, now largely forgotten. During the majority of the Khmer Empire’s 600-year dominion in Southeast Asia, its capital was located not at Koh Ker but at Angkor, home to the largest temple complex in the world.
A new study has identified a culprit in Koh Ker’s short reign: its failed water management system.
“Studying water management is a basic part of understanding how cities function,” said Alison Carter, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Oregon who was not involved in the study. “Water management networks do not build themselves, but rely on a complex set of social interactions on top of understanding landscape engineering and knowledge of the environment.”
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Faculty members from OSU, UO, and PSU are coming together to collaborate on a Year of Water, a university-led, statewide initiative to convey the connectedness of water – where it comes from, where it goes, and why we should care. The Year of Water not only highlights the role Oregon’s research universities play as community and industry leaders and partners seeking to understand and address water-related challenges, but also leverages the work of many of Oregon’s public higher education institutions and showcases events of organizations working on behalf of water. Through the Year of Water, we hope to leverage and foster water collaborations within and outside of the universities; increase awareness and coordination to discover synergies across the universities; promote water literacy; and broaden the collective impact and benefits of our work.
In the coming months, we will be launching an Oregon water research tool showing recent and current water-related research. This tool will be similar to the Coastal Research Tool that our Oregon Explorer Program created in partnership with PSU, OSU, and the Oregon Coastal and Ocean Information Network. We have also slated for production the documentary video of groundwater development in the Umatilla Basin, “Water before Anything: Ten Years Later” – part 2 of the 2009 documentary Water Before Anything. Stay tuned to H2Oregon and the Oregon Year of Water soon-to-be-launched Facebook site for more details, including postings of resources and upcoming talks, workshops, and other water-related events.
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The Public Interest Environmental Law Conference is the premier annual gathering for environmentalists worldwide, and is distinguished as the oldest and largest of its kind. PIELC is organized by Land Air Water, the nation's oldest student environmental law society, and put on by student volunteers from around University of Oregon.
This year, PIELC will host a conversation about migration on a changing planet. Changes to the environment have always affected the movement of humans and other life on earth. Recently, global awareness has shifted to issues of migration as the impacts of land use and resource extraction accelerate climate change and ecological crises. Conflicts and environmental disruptions force humans to leave their homes and face untold tribulation. Entire ecosystems creep toward the poles, and species climb to higher elevations. Climate, animal, and plant cycles fall out of sync with alarming consequences. Many species dwindle while others quietly wink out of existence. No place on earth is free from these changes.
Register here.
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Portland State University
2020 Water Justice Speaker Series:
Impacts on historically marginalized and rural communities
Thursdays, 4:00-5:00-pm
SB1- 170
1025 SW Mill St
Portland, OR 97201
Contact: Dr. Melissa Haeffner @
Oregon Water Stories for more information
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This Bi-Annual event showcases our industry in the NW Area of the United States, and brings together contractors from Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Alaska. It's a great opportunity to reconnect with friends and clients, and make some new ones as well!
Register here
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Framing the Oregon Environmental Justice Pathways Summit – 2020:
What are unique and location-relevant solutions for distinct Oregon communities emerging from those striving for Environmental Justice that can reshape the political-economic structure behind injustices in Oregon? How and at what scale should we confront challenges specific to:
○ Climate Justice
○ Water Justice
○ Air Pollution and duality
○ Just Transition and Community Resilience and Adaptation
○ Role of Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Science and Data when crafting policy
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This workshop focuses on the northwestern United States, including Idaho, Oregon, Utah, Washington, northern Nevada, and western Montana.
Population pressures, agriculture, mining, and energy development are intensifying interest in groundwater availability and quality in this diverse and economically important region.
Register here
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Oregon Lakes Association and Oregon State University with cooperation from Oregon Health Authority and Oregon Department of Environmental Quality are sponsoring the annual Cyanobacterial Harmful Algal Bloom Stakeholder Meeting.
This meeting is appropriate for policy makers, scientists, and natural resource managers. Information shared and presented is generally programmatic.
Register here
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Oregon regulators have failed for three decades to curb nitrate contamination in drinking water sources near Eastern Oregon’s large dairies and feedlots.
Now, eight state and national health and environment groups are asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to step in and take emergency action.
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For the past several decades, people have been enthralled by the “green foods” revolution. These foods include barley grass, microalgae (e.g. chlorella, spirulina and Aphanizomenon flos-aquae), wheat grass juice and sprouts. In this article, we’ll look specifically at Aphanizomenon flos-aquae (AFA) microalgae, and the role it can play in your dog’s health.
The source for AFA algae is Klamath Lake, the largest freshwater lake in the Oregon watershed. Most estimates indicate that the spring waters flowing into Klamath Lake come from Crater Lake, after a journey of approximately 15 miles through mineral-rich underground aquifers.
Generally, wild algae are found in bodies of water that are stagnant or deteriorating, but Klamath Lake is an exception, and supports not only a tremendous biomass of AFA but also fish, waterfowl and predatory bird species. Klamath Lake is rather pristine, devoid of industrial activities and surrounded by national parks.
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Spring Chinook salmon haven’t swum in the Walla Walla River basin since the 1900s, but the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation just broke ground on a long-awaited hatchery that could change that.
During a ground-breaking event at the South Fork Walla Walla Chinook salmon spawning facility outside Milton-Freewater on Friday afternoon, CTUIR Board of Trustees Vice Chair Jeremy Wolf explained that the spring Chinook hatchery, a more than $20 million project funded by the Bonneville Power Administration, is anticipated to open in the spring of 2021.
It could bring more than 2,000 adult salmon back to the Walla Walla Basin by 2025, he said. According to the BPA, it could eventually return 5,000 adult salmon to the basin each year.
“This is going to benefit the entire system of Walla Walla, and the whole state,” Wolf said.
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Oregon boasts over 110,000 miles of rivers and streams—waterways that contribute greatly to the health and well-being of people, their communities, and a diverse array of wildlife and habitats. Nevertheless, only 2 percent of the state’s rivers are protected under the 1968 Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, which Congress passed to safeguard clean, free-flowing rivers, streams, creeks, and tributaries from development and pollution.
Oregon Senator Ron Wyden (D) is hoping to increase that percentage by inviting the public to nominate waterways for wild and scenic designation.
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The Oregon Department of Agriculture recently received approval from a legislative committee to hire two specialists for hemp inspections and enforcement as well as an assistant water master to investigate whether hemp farmers are violating water laws.
Meanwhile, Oregon State University recently received $2.5 million in federal funding to support its new Global Hemp Information Center, which will focus on research across multiple facets of the industry in Oregon and in other geographic areas along similar latitudes.
Related news on the Emerald Triangle in southern Oregon and northern California here
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Paramount Gold Nevada (PZG +4%) receives the Permit to appropriate water from the Oregon Water Resources Department for its proposed Grassy Mountain Gold Mine and processing facilities in eastern Oregon.
The Permit describes the appropriation and use of 2 cubic feet per second of water within the Permit Area
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State Sen. Bill Hansell, R-Athena, recently introduced Senate Bill 1562, which calls for the Oregon Department of Agriculture to form a new task force that would review existing data and recommend solutions to the area’s decades-old groundwater problem.
The Lower Umatilla Basin in Northeast Oregon is home to some of the state’s most productive farmland, with thousands of grazing cattle and vast fields of irrigated crops. But rising levels of groundwater nitrates could pose a public health threat if left unchecked.
Regulators declared the Lower Umatilla Basin Groundwater Management Area in 1990 to identify and mitigate sources of nitrogen contamination, including from agricultural operations.
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2019 SUMMIT RECAP with Professor Martin Doyle of Duke University
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“There are a lot of moving parts right now,” Sen. Bill Hansell, R-Athena, said.
The bill he plans to file would appropriate money to the Oregon Department of Agriculture for gathering and reviewing research on groundwater in the Umatilla Basin and creating an “implementation plan to improve ground water quality and obtain full or partial removal of ground water management area designation from Lower Umatilla Basin Groundwater Management Area.” The project would convene a task force to help coordinate the efforts of stakeholders, such as irrigators, the tribes and state department, in lowering the nitrate levels in groundwater.
Hansell said the idea came from a policy option package, or POP, from the Department of Agriculture in the last session. POPs are requests that aren’t an actual part of the budget but are a suggestion that an agency hopes the legislature will take and find funding for. In this case, Hansell said he attended a meeting on the Lower Umatilla Basin Groundwater Management Area in Hermiston where that POP was discussed and decided to take it on as his bill for the short session.
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The Swalley Irrigation District today is a smaller piece of the water puzzle that comprises the Deschutes water basin. It is one of the smallest of the eight districts at just over 4,500 acres of irrigated land. But it continues to push forward to modernize water transport in the form of underground piping. The Rogers Lateral Pipeline project is the latest system improvement, scheduled to be completed in April of 2020.
Kate Fitzpatrick, Program Director for Deschutes River Conservancy, hopes that Swalley’s improvements will be a model for other Central Oregon Irrigation Districts. She also noted the success of other piping projects in Sisters and Tumalo Districts. Fitzpatrick said, "Having a thriving river and all that entails may be worth some of the tradeoffs...as a community who do we want to be? Do we value our natural resources?"
Over the next five years all eight Irrigation Districts plan to pipe close to a half million feet of canals across Central Oregon. Their goal is to increase water reliability for farmers and fish species, decrease energy costs, and reduce overall operation and maintenance costs of water delivery.
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Despite the accumulation of recent snow in the mountains and the snow water equivalent hovering around average levels, the possibility for providing drought relief funds remains of high importance to Klamath County Commissioners, Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors, the Klamath Water Users Association, and the Klamath Basin Area Office of the Bureau of Reclamation.
Klamath County Commissioners and Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors in early January asked Bureau of Reclamation’s Klamath Basin Area Office to configure a work plan for how to spend extra expenditures allocated to them in 2019, and calling for the creation of a water bank in 2020.
“We’re just asking for that $10,200,000 (for the Basin) because there’s nothing proposed today,” Boyd said, referring to Klamath County, in a phone interview with H&N. “We want to remain whole if we can.”
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Our results are meant to highlight the ubiquity of PFAS and the vulnerability of the nation’s drinking water supply to PFAS contamination. They underscore what an expert at the Water and Environmental Technology Center at Temple University, in Philadelphia, said about PFAS contamination: “If you sample, you will find it.”
Link to interactive map
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Portland’s primary drinking water resource, Bull Run Watershed, is located 26 miles east of Portland in the foothills of Mount Hood. It is federally protected and there aren’t sources of pollution there. Portland’s groundwater resources are a different story, Wise explained.
The groundwater supply is located along the Columbia River in Northeast Portland, Gresham and Fairview beneath where thousands of residents live, work and play. That includes the Troutdale Sandstone, Sand and Gravel and Blue Lake Aquifers.
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Waterways are essential to the survival of humanity. The successful movement of people, food and goods has been central to the exponential increase in the number of humans on the planet and in the geographic area we control as a species.
The Port of Siuslaw is currently in the process of dredging the main docking areas for the facility, which has experienced a marked decrease in visitors using watercrafts during the past five years. One of the reasons for this decrease may be the inability of larger, live aboard vessels to safely navigate the Siuslaw estuary.
There are also fewer recreational crafts using the docks at the port and this is almost certainly due in part to boat owners’ inability to confidently enter and exit the Siuslaw River and the waterway leading to the docks.
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Extremely likely.
That’s how Dave Meurer, community liaison for Klamath River Renewal Corporation, describes the possibility of the removal of four dams along the Klamath River.
The draw-down of John C. Boyle, Copco 1 and 2, and Iron Gate Dams, and their removal, are set to begin starting in January 2022, pending a decision for the go-ahead by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, according to Meurer.
“$450 million is what has been allocated for the project,” Meurer said. “And then within that $450 million, the costs are being refined of who is going to be spending what on what.”
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The Oregon Department of Education will get $1.1 million to provide funding, training and technical assistance to schools and child care facilities to test for lead in drinking water. Under state laws enacted in 2017, all public schools and licensed child care facilities are required to test for lead in all water used for drinking or food preparation.
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Water demands are growing while supplies are not, creating a dynamic that’s ripe for legal conflicts involving Oregon’s water regulators, according to a recent government report.
Irrigators, tribes, environmentalists and municipalities often have competing needs for water, which the Oregon Water Resources Department must often resolve through administrative and court challenges.
“The stakes can be very high,” said Tom Byler, OWRD’s director, during a Feb. 3 legislative hearing. “In many ways, as scarcity increases, the likelihood of a dispute from one of these entities increases.”
Byler recently testified before lawmakers about a report that explains the 165 contested cases and lawsuits in which OWRD has been a party during the two most recent budget cycles since 2015.
The Oregon Legislature requested the report upon approving the agency’s budget last year due to increasing litigation over water regulation in the state.
Review the report here.
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