By David Thomas, NFS McKenzie River Steward
Date: October 21, 2025
Work on the Rewilding of the McKenzie River Basin:
Planned restoration projects for 2025 seem to have been productive. The Gate Creek Flood Plane Enhancement was largely completed, expanding on the work previously done at Finn Rock Reach on the McKenzie River. However, several key staff at the USFS either left or were fired as that agency adjusted to the priorities of the new administration. As most of the Upper McKenzie Basin is part of the Willamette National Forest, it is now unclear to what extent there will be needed federal participation in projects going forward. However, for 2026, there are plans to expand the flood plane restoration on the Lower South Fork towards Cougar Dam. At this point, it appears that funding will be available for this work. However, beyond 2026, the program will need to find new sources of funding to maintain the goals and expectations of the various partners in this basin-wide program.
I am currently working with the McKenzie Watershed Council and the McKenzie River Trust to identify promising sources of supplemental funding to provide ongoing support. The working premise is that there will be about a six-year period of unreliable federal support that will need to be “patched” with new sources of funding. The good news is that, in preliminary contacts with foundations that traditionally support conservation programs, they are well aware of this situation and intend to step up their participation as needed.
On a more positive note, the McKenzie River Trust continues to expand their holdings as landowners transfer basin properties to them. Of course, this process sets up an assessment of work that is needed to return the land to the services that meet the organization’s charter. This in turn stimulates project planning, including budgeting. Accordingly, the funding needs for basin programs increase and putting more pressure to resolve the funding issue described above.
The Status of Spring Chinook:
At this point in the year, the returns of ESA listed Spring Run Chinook Salmon at Willamette Falls were very close to their 5-year average. Data for salmon entering the McKenzie River at Leaburg Dam have not been released. However, it is expected that, given the efficiency of the Leaburg Dam sorting operation, only a small percent of hatchery origin salmon (HOR) will achieve the upper river to spawn. Last year the reported PHOS for the upper river was less than 5%.
However, the salmon spawning grounds below Leaburg Dam are extensive with a very high PHOS (>40%). For reasons that are not understood, HOR salmon moving up to Leaburg Dam seem to avoid the sorting operation and spawn below the dam. It is notable that if all spawning data are aggregated for both above and below the Leaburg Dam, the overall PHOS for Spring Chinook in the McKenzie River Basin is about 25%. This number is substantially above the recommended all-river PHOS (<5%) called for in the NMFS BiOp for this subbasin. In discussing this point with ODFW’s regional fishery biologist, Jeff Ziller, he opined that because the lower river (i.e., below Leaburg Dam) has warmer water, he did not expect that redds in that segment to be as productive as those above the dam. However, he offered no data to support that claim. NOAA’s 2024 5-year review (2024) of the status of listed salmon and steelhead in the Willamette Basin concluded that no progress has been made in the recovery of these listed species. ODFW seems to agree with this finding, but no party has committed to a serious process or program that might accomplish the purpose of the ESA listing.
Looking Forward:
The fate of the Leaburg Dam and bridge seems to be settled, in that the owner, EWEB has committed to decommissioning the Leaburg Power Station, it’s diversion canal and removing Leaburg Dam and the associated bridge. This system was put in place during the nineteen twenties and has provided electricity to the Eugene-Springfield area. The current move to remove the power station was spurred by a discovery of substantial instability in the canal used to divert water to the power station. This led to the decision to remove the entire system and the recognition that FERC would require dam removal as part of the decommissioning. Initial estimates of this project have been in the range of 20-30 million dollars. At present water previously diverted to the canal has ceased and is not expected to be reopened, even on a temporary basis. However, EWEB has recently notified their members that they expect to need about 5 years to assemble the relevant documents to submit to FERC as a petition to remove the project and that they expect to begin the physical removal process in 2032, with no estimate for completion.
Associated with these actions, the ACOE owned and operated McKenzie Hatchery is dewatered so that its only use is limited to recovering eggs from captured salmon and to caring for them until they hatch. Independently, the only other hatchery on the McKenzie River, the Leaburg Hatchery has suffered from increasing temperatures in its rearing ponds so that it now fails to meet the Oregon temperature standards for releasing water into rivers. Accordingly, fish are no longer reared and released from that hatchery. To further complicate these issues, ACOE seems to have taken the position that regardless of any commitments it may have made in prior mitigation agreements, now that they are being pressed to directly address issues of fish passage at their dams, the prior financial commitments are moot.
Fish Passage at Trail-Bridge Dam:
In the nineteen sixties EWEB developed a system of reservoirs and dams in the Upper McKenzie River Basin which they refer to as the Carmen-Smith Hydropower Project. The system provided several power stations and associated reservoirs, the lower segment ending at Trail-Bridge Dam and reservoir. The position of this dam acts as a barrier to listed Spring Chinook Salmon reaching spawning grounds above that dam. Also, a serious concern is the threat to the remaining isolates of endangered Bull Trout in the Western Cascades. By the time this species was recognized as highly endangered, its range was limited to small (>200 spawning fish) isolates above either Trail-Bridge or Cougar Dam in the McKenzie Sub-basin. As neither dam provided effective fish passage, efforts were made to reintroduce Bull Trout below Trail-Bridge Dam and above Hills Creek Dam on the Willamette River Middle Fork. At the time, it was assumed that fish passage improvements at the dams would support inter-connection of these populations and thus produce a more robust and sustainable population.
Downstream fish passage at Cougar Dam is a work in progress and an occasional Bull Trout passes down to the mainstem McKenzie River. However, their chances of moving back up to their natal spawning grounds are highly unlikely. In the case of the Carmen-Smith Project, when the FERC relicensing process was initiated in 2006, several conservation groups and ODFW pressed for the inclusion of fish passage to support Bull Trout and salmon spawning. After much back and forth, the license was renewed in 2016 with the specific inclusion that effective fish passage would be implemented at Trail-Bridge Dam, but exempting two dams higher up in the system.
Since then, and despite substantial prodding from the conservation community, EWEB has only implemented a pipe apparatus, large enough to hold a single fish attempting to move above the dam. By periodically checking this apparatus, the fish can, in principle, be captured and trucked above the dam and released in the above-dam reservoir. EWEB has provided no data on how many fish and of what species have been moved by this manner, but Jeff Ziller tells me that ODFW has assisted EWEB in moving “a couple of fish” above the dam. In 2024, a Bull Trout eDNA survey carried out by the McKenzie Flyfishers, and supported by the USFS and ODFW documented the current failure to expand the Western Cascade Range of these highly threatened fish.
How EWEB will respond to their obligation to provide effective fish passage is unclear. As noted earlier, they face substantial costs with the decommissioning of their Leaburg Power Station and associated dam. In response to the recent Federal Courts dismissal of the lawsuit regarding Trail-Bridge Dam fish passage, EWEB has simply announced the “We Won” with no explanation of the issues or the question of jurisdiction. In July they announced a new power contract for purchasing electricity from the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) from 2028 when their existing contract ends and extending it for another 20 years. The ultimate cost of this contract extension is expected to be from 2.5 to 3.0 billion dollars; all of which will be passed on to rate-payers. This is not a fixed rate contract, but only specifies the number of kilowatts that are being purchased, so the cost of electricity could rise substantially in the future. It is interesting to note that BPA is providing at least 80% of the power needed by EWEB. Hence, the in-house capacity of EWEB to produce electricity at the Carmen-Smith Project is limited to backups in times of high demands or as should BPA power not be available. Currently, EWEB has not released a time-line or cost estimate for Trail-Bridge fish passage, but their board of directors were advised that the costs would likely be above 20-30 million dollars. Given the current commitments to Leaburg and the BPA, we can expect that EWEB will be motivated to delay the project as long as possible. Whether there will still be Bull Trout in the Upper McKenzie Basin by then is at best an open question.
Perhaps independent of all these issues, on September 18th, the EWEB CEO and General Manager, Frank Lawson, announced that he is retiring next year. The utility has initiated a search for a replacement.
Very comprehensive report; also very disappointing.