MWMC Partners in Water Conservation

upper willamette Partner in Water Conservation:
MWMC PromoTES Class A Recycled Water Use

Willamette Riverkeeper takes pride in our Willamette River Festival partner, Metropolitan Wastewater Management Commission (MWMC), as a primary partner in education and water conservation. This year, MWMC was awarded $4M in federal drought resiliency funds for Class A recycled water development, by the Bureau of Reclamation this past May. The $4 million came from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act. This money will be used to upgrade existing infrastructure for water filtering, disinfection, storage, and conveyance. Once completed, the MWMC can deliver up to 1.3 million gallons of Class A recycled water daily for public works and industrial uses by community partners rather than pulling water from the Willamette River or using drinking water.

Recycled water has a variety of applications that can help reduce the impacts on our rivers by providing water for landscaping, irrigation, and industrial processes that can consume high volumes of water or place strains on drinking water systems. The MWMC historically produces Class D recycled water, which is used to irrigate its poplar tree farm as part of its natural treatment system for wastewater. In 2023, the MWMC utilized more than 46 million gallons of Class D recycled water. Class A capabilities will allow the community to expand that use to virtually any other application not requiring potable water.

The mission of the Metropolitan Wastewater Management Commission is to protect the community’s health and the environment by providing high-quality wastewater services to the Eugene Springfield metropolitan area in partnership with Eugene, Springfield, and Lane County. Local representatives from each regional partner–Lane County, and cities of Springfield and Eugene– serve on the Commission.

The MWMC has progressively explored opportunities to expand recycled water usage over the past 15 years. With the Bureau of Reclamation grant, the program is becoming a reality. Learn more information at https://mwmcpartners.org/capital-improvements/recycled-water/.

Additionally, this past spring, the MWMC launched an Advisory Network of community members to help guide their continuing development of Class A Recycled Water. The Advisory Network will help inform the MWMC of where and how recycled water may be best used so that the development can integrate with the identified community's needs.

If you work in the Eugene Springfield area and have a business or professional interest in the availability of Class A Recycled Water, consider taking a few minutes to complete this MWMC survey.

187 Miles of Wonder Fundraising Campaign

Dear Friends of Willamette Riverkeeper,

The Willamette is truly wondrous. It needs protection. It needs stewardship. It needs an advocate. And it needs Willamette Riverkeeper!

And we need you!

Our 187 Miles of Wonder Fundraising Campaign will run through the end of August. We are seeking to raise $75,000 to help fund our work. Thanks to a very generous supporter, the first $20,000 in donations will all be matched 1:1. This means your donation will be doubled! Please give today to get us off to a strong start!

DONATE HERE

Your contribution ensures that we will be able to:

• Protect water quality and hold polluters accountable

• Protect and restore fish and wildlife habitat

• Engage communities directly with the river through volunteer stewardship programs, field trips, community science programs and river events.

We are the only organization dedicated to protecting the entire Willamette River system from its wilderness headwaters to its urban confluence with the Columbia: Throughout its entire 187 miles of wonder! Can't do this work without you.

Please give generously!! DONATE HERE

or mail to:

Willamette Riverkeeper

1210 Center Street

Oregon City, Oregon 97045

Thank you for caring about our river! Thank you for your support for Willamette Riverkeeper!

Bob Sallinger

Executive Director

Willamette Riverkeeper welcomes Bob Sallinger as our next Executive Director and Michelle Emmons as our Deputy Director

Dear Friends of Willamette Riverkeeper,

On behalf of the Board of Directors of Willamette Riverkeeper, I am delighted to announce that we have hired Bob Sallinger to serve as Willamette Riverkeeper's next Executive Director and Riverkeeper and Michelle Emmons to serve as our Deputy Director. Bob and Michelle bring a tremendous amount of Conservation Leadership and accomplishment along with decades of experience specifically working to protect and restore the Willamette River.

Bob has worked for more than three decades on conservation issues across Oregon, from its most remote wilderness areas to its urban landscapes. He served for 30 years as Conservation Director for Bird Alliance of Oregon (formerly Portland Audubon) and the last year and a half working for Willamette Riverkeeper as our Conservation Director. Bob brings a strong, multifaceted background in non-profit management, conservation law and policy, advocacy, science and grassroots activism. He serves on a variety of boards and has a law degree from Lewis and Clark Law School. You can read more about Bob HERE.

Michelle has worked for Willamette Riverkeeper for more than a decade, serving previously as our Upper Willamette Watershed Manager. Michelle brings a wide range of conservation and outdoor recreation leadership experience to her new position, including founding the Oakridge Trails Alliance in the Willamette headwaters. She brings a deep passion for engaging communities in watershed stewardship. Read more about Michelle HERE.

They are part of a strong team that also includes our Restoration Manager, Vanessa Youngblood, Staff Attorney, Lindsey Hutchison, and Legislative Advisors, Greg and Rachel Leo.

We also want to express our appreciation to outgoing Executive Director. Travis Williams, and outgoing Board President, James Tiefenthaler. Their combined decades of dedication have helped build Willamette Riverkeeper into a powerful voice for the Willamette River. I am honored to be taking over the role of Board Chair from James.

As always, our North Star remains protecting and restoring a healthy Willamette River for people and wildlife. We have tremendous opportunities ahead. Our top priorities will include enforcing the Clean Water Act and holding polluters accountable, advancing protection and restoration of fish and wildlife habitat across the the Willamette River ecosystem's forested, agricultural and urban landscapes, and engaging communities with the Willamette River through river cleanup and restoration programs. field trips and events.

Our greatest strength is you, the amazing community of river advocates that has grown over our 27-year history. In the coming months, we will provide a variety of opportunities for you to help us chart the next phase of our work. We will also need your support more than ever--please stay involved and consider a donation to help us movie into our new era. PLEASE DONATE HERE.

I am very excited about our new leadership team and the important work that lies ahead. Please join me in welcoming Bob and Michelle to their new leadership roles.

Thank you for being part of Willamette Riverkeeper!

Cathy Tortorici

Board President

Willamette Riverkeeper

FIGHTING ENVIRONMENTAL ROLLBACKS IN THE STATE OF OREGON

Willamette Riverkeeper staff survey one of many areas affected by symptoms of problematic housing issues across the state of Oregon - but is removing our environmental protections to make way for housing in sensitive floodplains and wildfire prone areas the answer? Willamette Riverkeeper thinks NOT.

In an ideal world a group like Willamette Riverkeeper could spend all of its time and resources advancing new visionary environmental programs. Unfortunately we don’t live in an ideal world and we often also have to devote resources to fighting efforts to rollback our existing environmental protections. Those moments often flare when there is a crisis that can be exploited by developers and industrial interests as a pretext to go after environmental regulations. We are in one of those moments right now.

Nobody can credibly question that Oregon is enmeshed in a deep housing crisis. It has been a crisis that has been decades in the making, in part due to failed public policy that put the interests of developers ahead of the interests of the communities in which they worked. Unfortunately, powerful development interests have seized this moment to advance some of the biggest assaults on environmental regulations that we have seen in Oregon and befuddled politicians have been all too willing to go along for the ride. It has become standard fare in meetings with political leaders to hear them acknowledge that the environmental regulations they are seeking to undermine have little or nothing to do with the crisis at hand, but “we need to do something.” Environmental regulations have become the proverbial scapegoats and sacrificial lambs of the current housing crisis.

This is a double whammy, because at the same time that we have a housing crisis, we also have a climate crisis. Heat domes, flooding and other extreme weather events are becoming increasingly common in Oregon and in communities across the United States. We are learning the hard way that we must do more, double and triple down, on our efforts to make our urban and suburban landscapes more climate resilient. We must plant more trees, do a better job of protecting floodplains and wetlands, green our streets and our buildings, expand our system of natural areas and environmental setback, do more to protect air and water quality... These are things that are essential to making our communities more resilient. We also know that it is our most vulnerable and marginalized communities that bear the biggest brunt of the current inadequacies of existing environmental protections and green infrastructure.

At the state level, Governor Kotek brought forward HB 3414 during the 2023 legislative session. This bill would have exempted all housing developers across Oregon from virtually all local environmental regulations. Without any hyperbole, HB 3414 represented the single biggest assault on Oregon’s land use regulations since the system was put in place 50 years ago. Willamette Riverkeeper was the first conservation group to publicly oppose the governor and we have remained in the leadership of the opposition since that time. After losing by a single vote in the final hour of the 2023 session, the Governor vowed to bring back HB 3414 in the 2024 short session. Since that time, her Housing Production Advisory Committee (HPAC), which is dominated by development interests, has produced a series of horrific environmental rollbacks including lifting protections for isolated wetlands and exempting developers from protecting trees or environmental zones. Wilamette Riverkeeper along with several other conservation groups has been meeting weekly with the Governor’s staff and we are hopeful that she is beginning to recognize that there is a better path forward. We are hopeful that she will eliminate any environmental rollbacks from her 2024 legislation and instead advance a proposal that recognizes that we must advance legislation that promotes both affordable housing and climate resilience: It is a “both/ and…” not an “either/or…”

At the same time that we may be rounding the corner at the state level, the City of Portland has launched its own set of attacks on the environment. In recent weeks, the City has substantially weakened a “Floodplain Resilience Plan” which would have better protected high hazard flood areas, at the behest of giant development interests such as Zidell, OHSU and Prosper Portland. It has also brought forward an emergency housing ordinance that would suspend green roof, bird friendly building and bicycle parking requirements until 2029. The basis for these suspensions is not sound data showing that it would have any impact on affordable housing what-so-ever, but rather a survey that Commissioner Rubio’s office sent to developers asking them which regulations they would most like to suspend or eliminate. At a time when the City pays continual lip service to doing better on Climate, we need political leaders who are actually committed to substantively advancing climate policy and projects on the ground that actually make a positive difference.

Willaette Riverkeeper is in the forefront of fighting these rollbacks. We will continue to oppose any effort to pit housing against the environment. At a time when powerful development interests and compliant political leaders are trying to pit housing against the environment, we need a new vision. We need a vision that recognizes that we have a dual crisis, climate and housing, and we need solutions that work synchronistically to create green, affordable, climate resilient communities.

FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO GET INVOLVED IN ADVOCACY EFFORTS, PLEASE EMAIL BOB SALLINGER, URBAN CONSERVATION DIRECTOR AT WILLAMETTE RIVERKEEPER.