June 4 Meeting Notes

Committee Reports

Steering Committee: Chuck Lane
On May 21, the steering committee held a quorum and discussed
1. Coordinators biannual contract – consisting of five work areas each with tasks and deliverables. To do everything the council wants to do would require a staff larger than a single coordinator. The steering committee prioritized tasks in the contracts beginning with
    a) day to day business
    b) ensure action plan completion on time (in accordance with grant deadlines
    c) obtain a minimum ($3000) level of operational funding
    d) develop projects from the action plan
2. Finalize Technical Assistance Grant from OWEB : Total $28,000
    B.C. Fish Passage Projects (3) : $10,000
    Habitat Specialist Subcontract (5 projects): $15,000
    Grant Administration: $2500
3. Development of review strategy for Action Plan – waiting on executive summary from Liz Dent

None of the other committees (Land & Water Use, Water Quality Monitoring, Fish Passage, Outreach & Education) met, they are all finalizing their portions of the Action Plan and are meeting with Liz Dent to further her progress.

Coordinators Report: Sandra Coveny
1. Working to finalize Watershed & Winery Event – Press, etc
2. Writing final report for OWEB grant
3. Has been working with the Habitat person from the Technical Assistance grant, meeting with landowners. They have also been approached by the City of Philomath, they are interested in creating a land trust for the Mary’s River Park
4. Assisting Small Grant Applicants
5. Looking for new landowners

LIZ DENT – Action Plan Update – The action plan is in its final stages, the subcommittee reports are being pulled together and harmonized. The action plan’s tabular format makes it long, but easy to track progress. Liz is working on a process for identifying restoration priorities using available remotely sensed data to identify stream reaches where the “desired future conditions” are currently unmet. She is also working on a field process, to identify landowners – will try to incorporate resources from OSU, researchers and grad students to optimize that process. Steering committee will review a completed draft of the action plan at the June 24th meeting.

GUEST SPEAKERS:

Representatives from Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board (Janine Salwasser), the Willamette Basin Restoration Initiative (Marcia Sinclair), and Oregon State University (Tim Fiez), Valley Library Technology and, OSU Bioengineering (Jon Bolte) came to talk about various watershed information initiatives which are aimed at improving decision making and broadening access to state land use and environmental quality information

At the STATE Level, OWEB is developing and internet portal for natural resources information, working with decision makers to tailor the data and information products and analysis tools to meet their specific needs. Oregon State University Library is assisting in this process. All the information will be catalogued according to Oregon Plan Reporting Basins.

At the WILLAMETTE BASIN level, information is in a more advanced stage of development than other basins, due to the existence of the Willamette River Basin Planning Atlas. This atlas currently exists in Paper form, but the data, photographs, and other textual information that went into it is being converted into a format that makes it accessible over the internet, and can be used in a web-based Geographic Information System (GIS). With a web-based GIS, users will be able to access specific information on a location of their choice, and will be able to produce a map depicting that information, and print it out. Tim Fiez at OSU is working on this project and showed the council some of its capabilities.

John Bolte, from OSU Bioengineering showed the council a run of his Decision Support System (DSS) for Watershed Council Decision Making. This DSS is a computer model he has titled RESTORE. The computer model consists of LOCAL, WATERSHED LEVEL data, put into a computer platform designed in conjunction with local watershed councils to help make decisions according to the preferences, values, and priorities set by the councils themselves. John is working with Liz Dent to create a RESTORE model for the Mary’s River Watershed Council.