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Taking actions to improve urban stream health and habitat within the Eugene metro area

The mission of the Partnership is to improve and protect water quality and wildlife habitat in our urban waterways and aquifers for healthy, livable communities.

Partnership Goals

  • Develop community understanding of human impacts on urban waters and wildlife.
  • Foster community engagement in the protection and enhancement of urban waters.
  • Engage businesses by providing technical assistance to implement voluntary stormwater improvement measures, including but not limited to retrofit projects. 
  • Leverage local and external resources to promote voluntary stormwater retrofit projects.
  • Develop a monitoring framework to identify trends and monitor efficacy of stormwater improvement measures.
  • Improve wildlife habitat by planting native vegetation and increasing habitat complexity.
  • Build and support local workforce capacity in the field of urban water quality.
  • Distribute program benefits equitably.
  • Increase authentic engagement of BIPOC (Black Indigenous & People of Color) and other historically marginalized communities and incorporate their priorities into programming. 
  • Continue to collaboratively develop the Partnership, our processes, and programmatic structure.

The Partnership recognizes that water is more than a resource to be used to meet human needs—that it is an essential element that connects all life across geographies and throughout time and it is our responsibility to protect our waters. Water has different meaning and value to people throughout the Upper Willamette basin, and plays an important role in the cultural, spiritual, and biological lives of all our communities

Purpose

The purpose of the Partnership is to:

  • Establish a common framework to work together to further our respective urban stormwater goals in a cost-effective and strategic manner.
  • Identify roles and responsibilities through individual Adoption Agreements for each participating organization and provide flexibility for changes in the nature and degree of each organization’s participation (see addendums). 
  • Collaborate on planning and prioritizing of voluntary stormwater retrofit projects in the Upper Willamette urban areas.
  • Establish a platform that, in its representation of multiple organizations working toward shared goals, can help leverage project funding, including by providing support for grant applications.
  • Develop a shared outreach strategy drawing on existing Partner approaches to provide clear and consistent messaging that can be shared and amplified by Partners throughout the Upper Willamette.
  • Collaborate to bring sustainable funding and capacity for technical assistance, outreach, project design, implementation, monitoring, operations, and maintenance associated with voluntary stormwater improvement measures.

Partners and Funders

This program partnership leverages many years of experience in habitat projects and education, including:

  • Oregon Department of Environmental Quality
  • Oregon Department of Agriculture
  • Cascade Pacific RC&D
  • City of Eugene
  • SureCrop Farm Service
  • Meyer Memorial Trust
  • Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board
  • Oregon State University Extension Service Lane County
  • Environmental Protection Agency
  • Bureau of Land Management.