Make the McKenzie Connection!
Make the McKenzie Connection!
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Oregon’s top elected officials pledged to spend millions of dollars on winter road maintenance after dire warnings from the state Department of Transportation that highways would go unplowed because of a budget shortfall. Gov. Tina Kotek, Senate President Rob Wagner, and House Speaker Dan Rayfield announced Monday that the state would commit $19 million to make up the shortfall and allow the department to buy snow plows, purchase sand and salt for deicing roads and fix potholes and damaged p...
Since its closure on October 23rd, upgrade work at the Finn Rock Landing has been underway. Details of the project, owned and managed by McKenzie River Trust (MRT), include building a better road base, creating safer traffic flow, and the installation of new parking stalls. Other improvements to the popular site, which attracts as many as 400 people a day in the summer. will range from ADA-accessible walkways and fencing to bird-friendly lighting, picnic tables, and garbage receptacles. The...
FINN ROCK: Staff on the McKenzie Community School campus will be punching in and out soon, thanks to a plan approved at the district's November 15th board meeting. With a unanimous vote, the district board approved the purchase of software that will be used to operate timeclocks that are already installed in all the site’s buildings and are to be used by all employees to both check in and check out each workday. The costs of the system will be reimbursed by the state. In other business, Lacey Joy, the district’s special programs coo...
Beneath a Beaver moon, the McKenzie River Discovery Center was also a beacon....
Forest modeling by Oregon State University scientists shows that a site’s productivity – an indicator of how fast trees grow and how much biomass they accumulate – is the main factor that determines which time period between timber harvests allows for maximum above-ground carbon sequestration. The findings, published in the journal Forests, are important for Pacific Northwest forest managers seeking to strike an optimal balance between harvesting and carbon sequestration, an important tool...
Sharp-eyed folks can be rewarded if luck is with them on their hikes. Starting last Friday, two hundred locally crafted wooden ornaments were hidden along trails across the Willamette National and Umpqua National Forests. The annual Willamette Valley Ornament Hunt is now in its sixth year and will run until December 31st. People who locate them can register to win this year’s grand prize, which includes a two-night getaway in the Willamette Valley. Locally, some ornaments were placed on the M...
Local events got underway last week at both ends of the River, with a fair in Walterville and a dinner in Rainbow. More is planned next month, starting with the Walterville Grange hosting its annual Holiday Dinner and Open House on December 2nd. The Holiday Dinner and Open House will be held on Tuesday, December 12th, with doors open at 6 and dinner at 6:30 p.m. The program will start at 7:30 PM. Upriver, a raft parade float will be part of the Holiday Bridge Lighting Ceremony on Saturday,...
When considering traction tires for winter travel, the Oregon Dept. of Transportation is reminding motorists that they have several alternatives. Because studded tires damage pavement, ODOT encourages drivers to consider using chains or non-studded traction tires. “Traction tires” are studded tires, retractable studded tires, or other tires that meet the tire industry definition as suitable for use in severe snow conditions. Tires that meet Rubber Manufacturers Association standards for use in...
More than 1,100 Oregon households have received help from a $150 million wildfire recovery program the state set up after residents lost their homes during the devastating 2020 Labor Day fires. Three years later, the area is still recovering from the wildfires, which burned more than 1 million acres and destroyed or heavily damaged more than 4,300 homes in an eight-county region of Oregon. A full recovery is still years away. Since the fall of 2021, the Oregon Housing & Community Services agency...
The trade-offs between hydropower dams and endangered salmon in the Willamette Valley have been on full display in public feedback in a series of meetings hosted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The public meetings took place as an operational change at two dams meant to help fish is deluging rivers with mud. Willamette Valley residents and conservationists weighed in on the future of eight hydropower dams operated by the corps and the future of endangered salmon in three public comment...
BLUE RIVER: Besides reconfiguring the way traffic passes through the community, Lane County planners have also been exploring ways changes to zoning might help Blue River area recovery efforts. At a public meeting last week people were encouraged to comment on three different community plans. Two focused on the “downtown” area from west to east along Blue River Drive up to the bridge. The third option extends from the bridge to the McKenzie Schools campus. Under Alternative 1 (Downtown Fle...
McKenzie River startups, entrepreneurs, and small business owners are all invited to participate free of charge in the Destination Creation Course, a nationally recognized program for small businesses. The course will involve two all-day sessions in February and March with breakfast and lunch provided. Funding for the classes, valued at $800, comes from Lane County and RAIN Catalysts. The Destination Creation Course was developed by internationally renowned business consultant Jon Schallert. Jon’s Destination Business Strategy and has been used...
COBURG: Since the McKenzie River Trust acquired land from the Green family in 2003, Green Island has been evolving. The site has become recognized as the site of some of the least altered fish and wildlife habitats in the Willamette Valley. Green Island’s significance was based on research indicating that between Albany and Eugene - from 1850 to 1995 - close to 80% of islands, 41% of side channels, 80% of riparian forest, and 74% of alcoves and sloughs had been lost. Restoring the floodplain f...
The Oregon Water Resources Department must update its 68-year-old rules for permitting new wells or double down on regulating existing ones, department officials said. If it doesn’t, the growing problem of the state’s depleted groundwater reserves “is going to get very expensive,” said department director Doug Woodcock. Many of Oregon’s 20 groundwater basins are being sucked dry faster than water can naturally be replaced, according to the agency. This is an issue across the West, where dro...
MCKENZIE BRIDGE: In an October 17th letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Fisheries Service has challenged the way the Eugene Water & Electric Board is dealing with fish passage issues at the Carmen-Smith Hydroelectric Project. Kim Kratz, the assistant regional administrator of the NOAA’s OR/WA Coastal Office wrote that the lack of progress toward completion of the fish passage measures had “reached the point...
RAINBOW: Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) trailers that were brought to the McKenzie River area in 2021 have been decommissioned and hauled to the Farm Service Agency (FSA) in Gardiner to be sold through General Services Administration (GSA) excess auction. The 17 units that were placed at 54705 McKenzie Hwy. were part of FEMA’s Direct Temporary Housing Program, which provided temporary housing to residents impacted by the 2020 Labor Day wildfires. “The goal of the program is to give p...
MCKENZIE BRIDGE: It was another day of celebration when people gathered at Camp White Branch last Sunday. There were plenty of reminiscences from people who either attended camps or worked there, as well as some who as they aged, had done both. Originally named the “White Branch Lodge” the retreat was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1935 and run by the Obsidians outdoor group for 13 years when ownership was transferred to the Nazarene Church. Taking over in 1958, the Association of...
Three Oregon Republican senators sued Democratic Senate President Rob Wagner and Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade in federal court on Monday, marking the latest in a series of attempts by Republicans who shut down the Legislature for six weeks to subvert a voter-approved law and run for reelection. The federal lawsuit filed by Sens. Brian Boquist, Cedric Hayden, and Dennis Linthicum, along with three county Republican central committees and two voters, joins a state lawsuit filed by...
Unions and progressive advocacy groups that advocated for a new voter-approved law to punish lawmakers for walkouts are weighing in on a lawsuit by a group of Republican senators that challenges how the secretary of state interpreted the law. Supporters of the new law filed two amicus, or friend of the court, briefs urging the Oregon Supreme Court to uphold Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade’s ruling that a handful of Republican senators who missed more than 10 days of work are ineligible...
BLUE RIVER: There was more cause for celebration last Friday as applause rang out for people with shovels. The event truly “broke ground” when a crew of seven dug into the turf where the new O’Brien Memorial Library is to be built. The new building will join other public structures in Blue River that plan to have grand openings next year. The others include the Upper McKenzie Fire District’s Blue River station and a medical clinic funded by McKenzie Valley Wellness. The library rebuild will in...
RAINBOW: With a top speed of 163 mph, the Mercedes 300 SL was the fastest production car in the world when it debuted in 1954. Many of the examples that pulled into Rainbow last week were still capable of hitting that mark. All of the 37 cars on the 300 SL Foundation tour that swung through the McKenzie Valley last week were factory originals. Some had been fully restored, and frame-up rebuilds using original parts. A few others were “hot rods” that had their performance tweaked a bit. That sor...
White-topped ridges and falling leaves are indicators the seasons are changing. Another is the annual closing of the Old McKenzie Pass Highway, OR 242. On Monday morning, October 30th, Oregon Dept. Of Transportation, crews closed the highway from the western snow gate to the top of the pass at Dee Wright Observatory. The east side of the highway from the observatory to Sisters will remain open until the weather becomes too severe - or until November 9th, whichever comes first, according to Kacey...
This year, El Niño is in place heading into winter for the first time in four years, driving the outlook for warmer-than-average temperatures for the northern tier of the continental United States, according to NOAA’s U.S. Winter Outlook released last by the Climate Prediction Center.. From December through February, NOAA predicts wetter-than-average conditions for northern Alaska, portions of the West, the southern Plains, Southeast, Gulf Coast and lower mid-Atlantic and drier-than-average cond...
Correction, this article refers to the Finn Rock Reach property acquisition of 2015. FINN ROCK: The McKenzie River Trust (MRT) has purchased another 154 acres of riverfront land Rosboro sold the land in a closed-bid auction..The property, called McKenzie Camp, includes about two miles of riverfront, numerous side channels, ponds, wetlands, and old floodplain forest. MRT, a nonprofit land trust has protected over 4,000 acres of healthy natural lands in the region. “We are grateful to the folks a...
Crews working on a project for the McKenzie Watershed Council have placed five concrete panels to create the base of a bridge over Quartz Creek. The bridge, which leads to Pond Road (USFS 805) is the initial phase of a larger-scale project to restore floodplain habitat across 180 acres in the Quartz Creek sub-watershed. The work was designed to help reduce the impacts of large flood events, capture fines and sediment, and enhance habitat for Chinook salmon, bull trout, and other native species....
