The City of Florence, local stakeholders, and partner agencies recently formed the Siuslaw Estuary Partnership (SEP) to address threats to drinking water quality and fish and wildlife habitat in the lower Siuslaw watershed. The Sole Source Dunal Aquifer within the lower Siuslaw watershed, which supplies the City ’s drinking water,...
In 2008 the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (ODEQ) initiated a program to monitor Oregon’s surface waters and aquatic biota for the presence of pollutants that pose risks to human and/or environmental health. ODEQ’s Toxics Monitoring Program was first implemented in the Willamette River Basin (WRB) between 2008 and 2010....
Columbia River Basalt Group (CRBG) aquifers are commonly thought to be relatively flat lying, laterally extensive, and mostly confined, and therefore not likely to be directly connected to surface water. However, many of the CRBG units in south-central Washington and north-central Oregon were deposited within evolving synclinal structures of the...
Climate change will continue to profoundly affect water supply and aquatic ecosystems in the Pacific Northwest. Changes such as warmer air temperatures, increases in the proportion of winter rain versus snow, reduced spring snowpack, and earlier snowmelt all affect streamflow. The response to these climate impacts includes earlier runoff peaks,...
