Minutes of the MRWC January 5, 2005 meeting:

The meeting began at 7:03pm with introductions. Committee Reports followed:

1) Outreach and Education: They are redesigning their website with a grant and staff help from the city of Corvallis;
2) Water Quality: They met on Dec.2nd, discussing preliminary results of the summer/fall surveys and considered what sampling was required for the remainder of the study;
3) Land, Air and Water Use: haven't met;
4)Fish Passage: Although they haven't met, they have made progress;
5)Steering: Meeting on December 14th, they discussed a) grant review and approval process, which Tom Murphy explained in detail to us at the Council Meeting. He handed out copies of the proposed protocol for considering most grant applications, as well as occasional "fast track" proposals. The Council agreed by consensus to try this for a year or so, for the 10-15 proposals generally put forward. The main intent is to get proposals to the full Council early on and build on expert reviews when possible; b) the regional geographic initiative grant from EPA, which is a joint proposal from the Luckiamute and Marys River Watershed Councils. Its purpose is to better understand components of habitat, so that we can enhance and improve it, using multiple species such as turtles and butterflies; c)the Philomath water supply issue: Chuck brought us up to date on events related to this issue and Todd Jarvis, who gave the December presentation, pointed out that there are things that could be done to add water to the water supply. Todd wrote up a summary of several pages, and now needs a team to build of plan of action. The deadline is January 20th. Tentatively Chuck Lane, Sandra Coveny, Bill Pearcy, Ed Radke, and Thom Whittier have agreed to help.

The Guest Speaker for the evening was Chris Stebbins. He is coordinating the Benton Fish Passage Improvement Program with Benton Co., Benton SWCD, MRWC and OSU, to consider which culverts are barriers to fish passage. He trains teams of volunteers to determine whether a culvert is a barrier, giving us photo examples of impassable culverts which were replaced by new culverts that allowed fish passage. He maintains a GIS database of fish passage information all in one place, instead of being kept independently by ODOT, ODFW, ODF, BLM and Benton County. This single central database for fish passage data eliminates dulplication, allows data to be current and standard, and equally accessible by the public. This should accelerate habitat restoration projects.

There are hundreds of culverts on the Marys River, and he showed us 2 examples: Alexander Creek and Woods Creek. He pointed out a very interesting website he encouraged us to check: www.streamnet.org. The MRWC can learn software and the best culvert survey equipment and both are available through Chris. The data can be served right back at the website, which would streamline the whole process. He also mentioned grants by ESRI's conservation program for GIS software and ArcPac through www.conservation.org, click on ESRI grants. He showed photos of the equipment he uses, including laptops, PDA with windows, antenna, etc.

Sandra Coveny gave the Coordinator's Report: She worked on and sent off 3 grants in December, one for Council support for 2005-2007, sent off a letter of interest to the Healthy Water Institute (looking for pilot projects to improve education for children and their parents), and a proposal to EPA working jointly with the Luckiamute Watershed Council (as mentioned above). Please note that the MRWC office is moving. Sandra mentioned an Oak Restoration Workshop on March 2nd at the Corvallis library, with booklets and videos, jointly sponsored by the Greenbelt Land Trust and Benton Co. SWCD. Our Council was looking for some additional members of the Steering Committee and both Jim Fairchild and Stacey Carpenter were strongly endorsed and recommended to those positions by both Sandra and the MRWC members. Sandra will also be working with Jeanine Stalwasser on grant reviews, and working with Chuck Knoll for prioritizing barriers in the Marys River. We adjourned at 8:40.