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EVERYBODY KNOWS WHAT Multnomah Falls looks like. It's as much an emblem of Oregon as Mount Hood and Crater Lake, and receives some 2 million visitors annually.
But what happens to all that water once it's fallen?
It forms a stream of course. But engineers and others have dramatically changed the nature of that stream. While the stream used to form an alluvial fan that spread out to the Columbia, it now takes a hard left to Benson Lake. Along the way it is funneled and bordered with man-made stone banks that keep it from invading the massive Multnomah Falls parking lot and I-84. It needs to be dredged on occasion to keep it that way, and it no longer supports the diversity of fish that it once did.
Managing a stream like this requires the talents of engineers, fish biologists, road building experts, geologists, and others—each of whom rarely speak each other's professional languages.
Portland State's new River Restoration Professional Certificate Program hopes to change that by having instructors in widely varying disciplines show students of equally diverse backgrounds the kaleidoscope of factors that go into managing streams and rivers. Rather than making each student an expert in all related fields, the instructors demonstrate enough of a river's complexity to give the students an idea of whom to bring into a project when they don't know something.
Dick Dewey, director of PSU's Environmental Professional Program, says his department developed the curriculum with the assistance of many public and private partners and after surveying 300 attendees of a river restoration conference. "Their career paths fit into more than 20 categories and 100 different professional associations. The overall problem with this field is that the disciplines within a project aren't talking to each other as a team," he says.
Janine Castro, an instructor on loan from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, brings up a case in point: a huge stream channel rebuilding project in Puget Sound.
"All the physical components were done well and all the vegetation. Then all the fish died because of water quality. They should have brought in somebody with a water quality background," she says.
BACK AT MULTNOMAH FALLS, instructor Randy Reeve, who worked as a biologist with Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife before joining an environmental consulting firm, slips on hip waders and sloshes through the stream. The scene is punctuated by the occasional fingerling salmon rising to the surface to hit on an insect. Reeve points out that the falls spill quite a bit of rock into the stream from year to year. Gravel from the falls has raised the stream level a couple of feet from where it was the last time it was dredged. Dredging keeps the stream under control, but introduces silt, which is hard on aquatic insects. And what's bad for insects is usually bad for fish.
Thus the river changes from the effects of nature and humans, and each change creates still more changes.
"So if the creek starts running through the walkway, how do you fix it?" asks Reeve. "How do you deal with the fish? How do you stage the project? Do you need to drain the water, and if so, how? That involves building dams and bringing in pumps. Then when you're done you have to let the water back in, and that can take hours."
REEVE ISN'T EXPECTING answers. He's just making a point: River restoration is a puzzle beyond the ability of one person or one discipline to solve.
Students in the program range in age from their 20s through their 50s. They include young graduate students to seasoned professionals, and spend many hours of course time on riverbanks throughout the state.
"It's a competitive, quickly evolving field," says Dewey. "Historically, many mistakes were made by river restoration professionals. Our instructors are teaching state-of-the-art methods. The winner is healthy, functional streams."
John Kirkland, a Portland freelance writer, wrote the articles "Stratospheric Thrills" and "A Beautiful Hand" in the spring 2006 PSU Magazine.