2020 Crooked River Water Quality Report
The DRA is pleased to announce the release of our 2020 Crooked River Report. It is available on our DRA Reports webpage.
It is no secret that the water quality of the lower Crooked River is poor. This creates long-lasting consequences for downriver ecology at both its confluence in Lake Billy Chinook and as it is passed to the lower Deschutes River. The Deschutes River Alliance is committed to monitoring, improving, and upholding water quality of the lower Deschutes and throughout the wider Deschutes Basin. Throughout this past year (2020), we continued monitoring water quality in the lower Crooked River at Smith Rock State Park and the results are clear: water quality in the lower Crooked River is in poor condition and exceeds water quality standards for a number of parameters.
Yet fish being reintroduced into the Crooked River are expected to survive, grow and migrate down to Lake Billy Chinook. This despite the water quality requirements in the Crooked River exceeding what is understood biologically to exceed what cold water migratory fish are able to tolerate and thrive in.
Poor water quality in the Crooked River is not a new revelation. As far back as 1998, the Crooked River was identified by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (ODEQ) as not meeting water quality standards, and in 2000 ODEQ began collecting data to complete a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) study*. This process required collaboration among interest groups across Central Oregon to discuss high water temperatures, low dissolved oxygen concentrations, high pH levels, excessive amounts of algae (chlorophyll a), excessive amounts of fine-grained sediment and turbidity. Unfortunately, the TMDL was never completed, and now twenty years later, many portions of the Deschutes Basin (including the lower Crooked River) are still without Total Maximum Daily Load standards for controlling pollutants.
Our water quality data obtained in 2019 and 2020 for the lower Crooked River at Smith Rock State Park shows a lack of enforcement and the inability to meet current water quality standards under status quo implementation. Our goal is to document these conditions to provide insight to future policy, and aid in the mitigation of unintentional damages caused by agricultural and municipal works.
In 2021, we will continue our efforts. Through consistent monitoring supported by knowledgeable scientists, we look forward to bringing high-quality, reliable data to the table in the years to come.
*A Total Maximum Daily Load, or TMDL study, identifies key water pollutants and sets numeric limits on those pollutants such that water quality standards will be met. The federal Clean Water Act requires states, or the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, to develop a TMDL for each water body on the state's polluted waters list, also known as the 303(d) list (Integrated Report). Adapted from Oregon Department of Environmental Quality’s website: https://www.oregon.gov/deq/wq/tmdls/Pages/default.aspx