Powder Basin Watershed Council Expanding its Restoration Plans

BAKER CITY — (Release from the Powder Basin Watershed Council) Hello Friends and Partners of the Powder Basin Watershed Council,

We have some new things “cooking” that we would like to make you aware of.

At the end of October, we were awarded two grants from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board that will: 1) support an update of our Strategic Plan and development of a 10-year watershed restoration action plan, and 2) increase our capacity to develop restoration actions in the upper Burnt River, upper Powder River and Pine Valley to address beaver restoration, aquatic organism passage and irrigation system modernization.

The OWEB funds will allow us to bring on a full-time person to work on these activities over the next year or so. We are currently looking for someone to fill this position (Watershed Restoration Coordinator), so if you know someone that might be interested, send them our way!

The first step in our planning effort will be to update our current Strategic Plan, then with this foundation, we will work with the community to develop an action plan for the next ten years. We will utilize existing watershed assessments and data to select geographic focus areas, identify limiting factors and prescribe actions to address them. Critical to this effort will be community involvement in both a stakeholder group and technical team.

We will begin reaching out soon to assemble both the stakeholder group and technical team for the planning effort.

Stay Tuned!

Tim Bailey

Executive Director

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Elkhorn Media Group