CLIPA White Paper

Almost every State funded study relating to Capitol Lake, with State regulatory and resource management agency input, concludes that the most appropriate method to manage the water environment, the 35,000 cubic yards of annual sediment, and the public use and benefit of the Deschutes Watershed, Capitol Lake and the southernmost part of Budd Inlet, is the routine dredging of the Capitol Lake basins and lower Budd Inlet.

 

Such dredging is necessary to prevent the accumulating sediment deposition from the Deschutes Watershed from choking off open waterways and navigation. While the 2009 CLAMP study focused only on Capitol Lake and the tidal mud flat (“estuary”) alternatives, it, too, recognized that the North basin and the lower Budd Inlet need to be dredged as a first priority if the estuary proposal is advanced.

 

In developing a vision for the future that addresses overall ecosystem health and water quality, CLIPA was surprised to discover that the CLAMP study and previous studies excluded a Deschutes Watershed-wide approach. In our collective mind, a solution should include a watershed and basin management plan, including these goals:

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⁸ For example, according to a Department of Ecology staffer speaking at a Deschutes TMDL Advisory Group meeting, many areas of the middle Deschutes Watershed are in violation of water temperature standards (some in the lethal range for fish, as temperature correlates inversely with dissolved oxygen – the main influence on dissolved oxygen in this portion of the watershed is temperature, not nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus). Some of these areas could be improved by as much as 5 degrees Celsius/9 Fahrenheit during the summer by providing shade. Shaded areas in the middle Deschutes River Basin average 40% but could be improved to as much as 80% with proper riparian planting. This is especially true between Deschutes Falls and Offut Lake.