“Bag-o’-rocks!” Rick hollered, as he braced waist deep in the swift current of the Deschutes River. “Got it!” Brian answered on the walkie-talkie as he operated a surveyor’s transit. Rick set a bag filled with rocks on the bottom of the river to mark the point, waded back to shore and scrambled up the bank through the poison oak and wild rose thorns, keeping an eye out for rattlesnakes.

Read the rest of this entry.

Today the Oregon Dept. of Environmental Quality and Warm Springs Tribal Water Control Board, in response to an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife request, instructed PGE to increase the amount of cool water to be released down the Deschutes River through the remainder of August.

Read the rest of this entry.

We may have inadvertently created some confusion about what our lower Deschutes River temperature management program is attempting to achieve. I, like others, have referred to the program as returning the temperature cycle for the river back to what it was before Round Butte Dam’s construction in 1964. Technically, this is a misstatement of the standard we are trying to achieve. In both water quality certificates granted by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and Tribal Water and Soils, the standard we’re required to meet is to discharge temperatures at or below “Natural Thermal Potential.”

Read the rest of this entry.