Meeting Notes: February 6th , 2002

l.Steering Committee report: Proposed additions & deletions for the Bylaws were handed out and read (Sandra)

2. Land & Water Use Committee: Curt listed 4 action items for the proposed action plan. The goal of this is to pass timely information on pending changes in land and water use o watershed members. The plan has 4 parts which include identifying current land and water uses, identifying proposed changes in these, identifying spatially explicit information about current and historical land use to identify gaps in knowledge and identify ways to fill those gaps, and lastly, to facilitate the flow of information to watershed residents.

3. Culvert Committee: will meet later this month. Last month they met the 2nd Tuesday of the month.

4. Outreach and Education Comm: Their meeting had a good turnout. They asked committee members for job descriptions. There is a change in meeting time/date. It will meet the 4th Thursday at 7:30, at 23rd and Monroe. They would like to identify potential speakers 6 months in advance.

II. Sandra Coveny, our Watershed Coordinator, gave a detailed account of her time-expenditure(43.7 hrs/week) and promised never to have maternity catch-up again (Okay, Sandra, we'll hold you to this). There is an administrative assistant (Tracy Noel) to help Sandra. There are also 2 potential OSU interns who may also help out with jobs such as putting membership into GIS to see what parts of the watershed are represented. Some extra money ($6K) is available from OWEB and the steering committee will discuss possibilities. Sandra rewrote a NOAA grant, and submitted it in a very short turnaround time to OWEB for funding. She briefly discussed plans for the JUNE 23rd Tyee Vineyard Summer Celebration and asked for volunteer help in organizing and implementing it.

III. Thom Whittier gave an in-depth presentation to correct misimpressions about the Clean Water Act. This included a history of the Act from 1970 on, and went over specific wording of selected sections. The objective of the Act is to restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the Nation's waters. He discussed how the interim goal, which is to protect and propagate fish, shellfish and wildlife and provide for recreation, differs. It was clear that the States have the responsibility for getting this done, although EPA will be watching and assisting. He discussed how these goals could be achieved for Oregon's 50,000miles of flowing waters. Oregon has specific Biological Criteria which requires waters of the State to be of sufficient quality to support aquatic species without detrimental changes to the resident biological community. This presentation elicited challenging questions.

IV. Anton Grube and Richard Raymond gave their 6-month report on the ongoing water quality monitoring project which involves sampling 13-different sites along the Marys River. Twenty-six volunteers (many from Jeff Mitchell's Advanced Ecology Class at Philomath High School) helped and logged a total of 168 volunteer-hours so far in the field. They will also be working up the invertebrate data. With a aid of a series of slides, Richard reported the trends for bacteria, conductance, temperature, dissolved oxygen, turbidity and phosphorus at these sites. Considerable discussion followed. The Water Quality Monitoring Committee will meet Tuesday at 5 pm at the Philomath Library meeting room to discuss these results further.

V. The meeting was adjourned at 9:15. Submitted by Amy Schoener