Mayhem on the McKenzie

The McKenzie River here in Oregon is where I saw my first real waterfall. I was in my twenties and I was awed at the power of the water and my first sight of its beauty and its force. The McKenzie is the source of Eugene, Oregon’s drinking water, and earlier this year a debate arose after Lane County and the local public utility, Eugene Water and Electric Board, made an effort to preserve the cleanliness of that water.

At the same time, EWEB was also trying to get a third water right for drinking water on the river, by selling water to neighboring Veneta. The issue at first was sprawl, but little did most people know, another “quasi-municipal water source” was also vying for that water, and Willamette Water Company apparently wants to make sure it has the right to that water, and is trying to block efforts to preserve some of that water for  the endangered species that live in the river, like Oregon chub. It’s possible for Willamette Water to do that under Oregon’s antiquated water rights system.

This series is my effort to make sense of the “Mayhem on the McKenzie” in hopes it will help Eugene and Lane County make good decisions about our water. There’s a lot of good, smart people trying to preserve this river, and I hope I was able to get what I learned from them across to readers.

Part I: Freshwater Fisticuffs: Warring for water rights in the Willamette Valley

First there were the robber barons. Then the railroad barons began laying tracks across the West. Timber barons for years have speculated on Oregon’s vast forests that once seemed an inexhaustible resource. Now that logging has slowed to a trickle, will there be water barons crawling out of the woodwork to exploit what might be Oregon’s most valuable resource in an era of climate change? (To keep reading go here.)

Part I and a half: Small Town Strip Mine: Dexter’s Parvin Butte is slated to become a quarry

As I researched the Willamette Water Company, I came across another story, thanks to John Tyler, pictured below. The same people who own that company own a number of other companies, many of them oriented towards resource extraction. One of those companies is involved with strip mining a butte that sits in the midst of the small community of Dexter, outside Eugene.

John Tyler stands in a neighbor's yard, bordering soon-to-be-dynamited Parvin Butte

Part II: Cry Me a River: The McKenzie River, climate change and the future of clean water

The cold waters of the McKenzie, one of the last rivers in the West with unclaimed water rights, might be coming to a boil, figuratively speaking, in the face of climate change. Looking at the McKenzie River on a map, the thin blue line doesn’t seem to take a lot of sharp twists and turns. It appears fairly straightforward as the waterway tumbles down through the rocks and trees of the Cascades, making its way to Eugene and its confluence with the Willamette. Still waters might run deep, but the story of the McKenzie’s roaring waters runs deeply too.

Water quality is as big an issue on the McKenzie as who owns the water, and just as the McKenzie’s water system is a result of eons of geologic time, cities and water planners look at water supply and quality not just for the next couple years but for the next hundred years. Recently Lane County has been the maelstrom of clashes over how to protect the McKenzie’s drinking water, as well as the battleground over who owns it. (To keep reading go here.)