Watershed Tours

Each year at the beginning of October the Clackamas River Water Providers host a tour of the Clackamas Watershed for elected officials from CRWP member agencies, interested citizens, and the citizens in CPO’s and Neighborhood Associations in the CRWP service area. The purpose of this tour is to connect our citizens and policy makers with direct experience in watershed (our source of drinking water), and to introduce them to some of the CRWP partners and stakeholders.  Due to COVID these tours have been on hold but we are hoping to resume tours in 2022.

The 2019 tour focused on the upper Clackamas watershed and included talks by the USFS, PGE and ODFW.  We stopped at the Fish Creek Camp Ground and Cater Falls to talk with the Forest Service about Wild and Scenic River designations, the impacts of dispersed camping on the forest, and the development of a new recreation site at Carter Falls.  We stopped in Milo McIver State Park to learn about a PGE side channel restoration project and how they are adding gravel back into the river system, and ODFW gave us a tour of the Clackamas Fish Hatchery and talked about some of the upgrades they have been making to the hatchery.

These tours are a great way to see where our drinking water comes from and how we are working with our basin stakeholders.  If you would like to receive an invitation for next year’s tour (we will be back in the lower part of the watershed next year) please contact Kim Swan at [email protected]

To find out more about how the CRWP is working to protect its source water and works with stakeholders please see the CRWP Annual Report FY 2020-21 and the CRWP Drinking Water Protection Plan which outlines long-term source water protection strategies. Contact us if you would like to be added to the Watershed Tour invitation list.

2019 Watershed Tour Photos

Video of Counting Salmon with PGE on a past watershed tour