A view of Quartz Creek, where work is underway to clear the banks so that the water can spread out and meander.
Rachael McDonald/KLCC
A major earth-moving project is underway along the McKenzie Highway east of Eugene-Springfield. The work is meant to restore the McKenzie River to its more meandering character to improve wildlife habitat and water quality.
Like many rivers, the McKenzie and its tributaries have been engineered by humans to follow a desired path.
“So, this is Quartz Creek…“ said Elizabeth Goward with McKenzie River Trust. It’s a shallow creek with rocky sloped banks where trees and shrubs grow. Its creek bed goes in a straight line towards the McKenzie.
Goward said rivers haven’t always been in a straight line. And the work they’re doing to restore the river system here is another in a long line of disturbances in the area.
McKenzie River Trust’s Elizabeth Goward.
Rachael McDonald/KLCC
“Another just like level of disturbance after a of fires, floods, volcanic eruptions, landslides,” she said. “And the initial work that went into making these areas workable for timber. Build roads, get water off the landscape as quickly as possible, and out of the way.”
There is a lot of disturbance going on here.
Trucks go back and forth on a bridge over Quartz Creek, a tributary of the McKenzie. They’re moving loads of rock, dirt and debris off the creek’s floodplain to level it so the creek can move freely.
Ashley Haley is with Haley Construction, the contractor doing the work. She said this is a unique project.
“It’s exciting to be involved in part of improving and restoring our waterways,” she said. “And improving the aquatic habitat for other native species.”
Ashley’s father, Randy Haley, owns the company, which is headquartered in Lebanon. He said they’ve done other stream restoration projects.
“It really helps, being the contractor, to see an area that’s been impacted,” he said. “To go in and develop structures and floodplains and see the increase in the Rainbow and the Chinook. It’s amazing when you can come back the next year and see how you’ve increased it.”
Haley said so far they’re a bit ahead of schedule. The work will go on over the next few months. People driving on Highway 126 will likely notice it, as will people recreating on the McKenzie near Finn Rock Boat Launch.
The estimated cost of the project is roughly $9 million with funds acquired through the McKenzie Watershed Alliance with contributions from federal and state sources. Eugene Water & Electric Board helped pay for project design and permitting costs.
David Richey, a Geographic Information Systems Analyst with EWEB, said this is an investment in long term watershed health.
“The McKenzie River is the sole source of water for about 200,000 people in the Eugene-Springfield area,” he said. “So, making long term investments in projects like Quartz Creek helps insure that water supply into the future. Healthy ecosystems make clean water.”
Richey said Quartz Creek is still holding sediment from the Holiday Farm Fire of 2020. The work they’re doing now will help prevent that sediment from making its way to the McKenzie River.
Piles of wood and slash that have been salvaged from areas that burned. They will be used to create woody habitat structures once the channels are excavated.
Rachael McDonald/KLCC
“This is a great spot to see the diversity of things taking place on this project,” said Nathan LeClear, restoration project manager at McKenzie River Trust. He pointed to the area around the creek.
“You can see that there’s large piles of wood and slash that have been salvaged from areas that burned,” he said. “These will be used to create woody habitat structures once the channels are excavated.”
He marveled at how in other restoration projects on the McKenzie, they’ve seen the river adapt quickly, taking up its old flood plain.
“I was just reflecting on how the earth remembers the river here,” LeClear said. “We’re looking at pictures and elevations to reconstruct where this river used to be. That memory of the river is still in the earth.”
And, Goward said the fish and wildlife remember too. She said they’ve found in similar upstream projects there’s been an almost immediate response.
“Within hours of removing trucks from sites we’ve seen beavers come back into areas,” she said. “During the Holiday Farm Fire, we actually had wildlife cameras in a similar project upstream on the south fork. And, 30 minutes after the wildfire receded, a blue heron came and landed in one of these areas and was fishing.”
Goward said they were able to continue with this project despite the uncertainties with funding for the U.S. Forest Service, which has been a major partner in the work.
“I think seeing the changes that happened pretty swiftly for one of our partners, and that this project can continue forward because of that whole community coming together to bring it forward, is just kind of proof of the importance of us collaborating and working beyond our own teams,” Goward said.
The project is on land that’s owned by McKenzie River Trust, a nonprofit out of Eugene, but the surrounding area is owned by a private timber company, Goward said. EWEB helped them secure an easement so that they could access the area over 50 years.
McKenzie River Trust told KLCC since 2016, the partners have restored more than 400 acres from the headwaters of the McKenzie River to Finn Rock west of Blue River.
Rachael McDonald is a reporter with KLCC. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.
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