The Deschutes Estuary Restoration Team is specifically interested in restoring the Deschutes River estuary, but we are incredibly excited about the formation of this new group.
The most encouraging thing is that this group will not focus on planning, but executing on the ground habitat projects. There have been many planning efforts on what is wrong with the Deschutes River watershed, so it’s great that the cities and the tribe are working to put those plans into action.
At the mouth of the river, as it reaches Budd Inlet, there is a lot of work left to do. Even if every inch of the upper Deschutes is restored, the problems associated with the damming of the estuary would still exist.
Capitol Lake itself is too shallow and stagnant to control water temperature. Even with an aggressive sediment control program in the upper watershed, 75 percent of the fine sediment coming into the lake is natural, so it would continue to fill.
According to the Department of Ecology, the lake would need to be 300 feet deep to control algae blooms. These are all issues connected to the nature of the lake itself as a dammed estuary, and not with the condition of the upper watershed.
