The McKenzie River watershed is a sub-basin of the Willamette River watershed and is bounded on the west by the Willamette Valley and on the east by the crest of the Cascade Range. Elevations in the McKenzie watershed study area range from over 10,000 feet at the summits of the Three Sisters, to about 450 feet at Hayden Bridge...

In August 2000, the Eugene Water & Electric Board (EWEB) completed a plan to protect the McKenzie River as the sole source of drinking water for the community of Eugene. EWEB began development of a source protection program in May 2001 that implements the August 2000 plan to address the various threats to water quality and long-term viability of the McKenzie River as a drinking water source.

In August 2000, the Eugene Water & Electric Board (EWEB) completed a plan to protect the McKenzie River as the sole source of drinking water for the community of Eugene. This outline focuses on one piece, source protection monitoring, of the overall drinking water source protection strategy.

The Drinking Water Source Protection Plan (2000) sets as a priority the need to establish a comprehensive monitoring subprogram to evaluate water quality, biological health, and land use trends within the McKenzie watershed over time.

This monograph was written to respond to many inquiries from watershed managers and policy makers seeking to understand the scientific basis behind the relationship between impervious cover and the health of aquatic ecosystems. It reviews more than 225 research studies that have explored the impact of impervious cover and other indicators of urbanization on aquatic systems.

The McKenzie River is the sole source of drinking water for more than 200,000 people in Eugene and surrounding communities. In October 2000, EWEB developed a drinking water source protection plan, which included a risk assessment of all potential threats to this valuable source of drinking water. The high-risk threat categories included stormwater outfalls, urban runoff, hazardous materials spills, agricultural activities and forest management activities (EWEB, 2000)

The McKenzie River is the sole source of drinking water for more than 200,000 people in Eugene and surrounding communities. In October 2000, EWEB developed a drinking water source protection plan, which included a risk assessment of all potential threats to this valuable source of drinking water. The high threat categories included stormwater outfalls, urban runoff, hazardous materials spills, agricultural activities and forest management activities (EWEB, 2000).

The forest management activities assessment in the McKenzie watershed implements a portion of EWEB’s drinking water source protection program (EWEB, 2000; EWEB, 2001a). The overall concept of drinking water source protection is to have the ability to measure the balance between watershed health and human use over time and implement actions that maintain a healthy balance for production of exceptional water quality.

The Septic Systems Assessment in the McKenzie watershed implements a portion of EWEB’s drinking water source protection program (EWEB, 2000; EWEB, 2001a). The overall concept of drinking water source protection is to have the ability to measure the balance between watershed health and human use over time and implement actions that maintain a healthy balance for production of exceptional water quality.

Long-term sustainable management of the McKenzie River watershed requires an understanding of water sources and discharge patterns from tributary streams, particularly those sourced in large-volume cold springs of the High Cascades. This project combined field measurements of discharge and stream temperature with laboratory analysis of spring water isotopes to improve our understanding of spatial and temporal recharge and discharge patterns of spring-fed streams.

Human activities are flooding the biosphere with fixed nitrogen (N), changing the biogeochemistry of both terrestrial and aquatic environments by adding biologically available N, primarily from fossil fuel combustion, agricultural fertilizer application and legume cultivation. The fate of much of the anthropogenic N load to the biosphere is uncertain because mass balance studies of major watersheds show that most of the added N is not exported to the oceans but is missing...

This Quality Assurance Project Plan (QAPP) describes the quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC) procedures that will be implemented as part of the stormwater and urban runoff monitoring program. The QAPP has been designed to ensure that the data generated are of sufficient quality to meet the study objectives. This QAPP has been prepared in accordance with the documents listed above and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality 303(d) list minimum data requirements.

The project is oriented to create a unified design manual for stormwater filtering systems to remove pollutants from urban runoff generated at smaller sites within the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The primary audience for the manual are engineers, planners and landscape architects at the local or state level that need to comply with stormwater regulations in urban or suburban areas.

Five times a year, at times associated with defined storm events, water samples sets will be taken at eight storm sewer sites, fourteen sites associated with creek basins (five on Camp Creek, six on Cedar Creek, and three on Keizer Slough), and two sites associated with highway drainage. There are also four sampling sites associated with the McKenzie River (Hendrick’s Bridge, Downstream of confluence with Camp Creek, downstream of confluence with Cedar Creek, Hayden Bridge).

EWEB’s Drinking Water Source Protection Program (DWSPP) for the McKenzie River watershed includes an extensive data collection effort and analysis component. In 2002 LCOG, under contract to EWEB, designed and implemented a data base (SQL Server) to store water quality monitoring data generated be the DWSPP.

Storm USGS Stream Flow: During storm event sampling efforts, gauge height and discharge (flow) data are downloaded from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) web site for three USGS gauging stations in the McKenzie River Watershed...