Rethinking stormwater in Central Oregon

Sunny days, cool nights, infrequent precipitation and a beautiful volcanic mountain setting: Bend’s unique high desert climate has made it one of the nation’s fastest-growing cities, but these same characteristics also present challenges around city planning issues like landscaping, irrigation and water management.

Oregon Environmental Council hosted more than 40 builders, designers, engineers, planners and land use experts in Bend for the first of four workshops addressing how low impact development (LID) practices can turn rain and snowmelt into valuable water resources. Stormwater is a unique problem in Central Oregon because the region will go for weeks without precipitation and then experience intense bursts of rainfall that, especially when combined with snowmelt, can flood city streets. Most cities in Central Oregon don’t have underground storm water pipes like you find in the Willamette Valley. Instead, they manage all their storm water on-site—which can be a good thing for rivers. However, hundreds of old drywells inject storm water into the ground, creating concerns about contaminating the groundwater that many people drink.

OEC’s Stormwater Solutions workshop combined LID lessons from another high desert area, Reno Nevada, with a panel discussion and site tour focusing on addressing these water issues in Central Oregon. Presenters and participants emphasized the need for stronger collaboration between architects, landscapers and contractors in the beginning of the planning process in order to implement smarter, more cost-effective storm water designs. Homeowners and businesses can realize significant water savings by choosing native, drought-tolerant plants and designing their landscape with shallow basins to collect water for the plants, instead of the typical mounded landscapes that shed water onto streets.

“The truth is that we’re still thinking about past threats like logging and agriculture impacts, and we haven’t yet reoriented to urban threats like storm water and runoff pollution,” says Phil Chang of the Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council. “This is an issue we can confront now before it’s too late for our groundwater and local environments.”

OEC will be hosting additional Stormwater Solutions workshops in Bend and Redmond later this fall. To learn more, visit our stormwater page. OEC would like to thank its Stormwater Solutions partners, including:

• Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council
• Oregon Department of Environmental Quality
• Oregon State University Extension Service
• Oregon Sea Grant
• City of Bend
• City of Redmond

Additionally, we'd like to thank the September 14 keynote speaker, Susan Donaldson, from the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension.

Participants get a firsthand look at LID landscaping at the Bend Parks and Recreation Center.	A flooded street in Bend in June of 2007 after a thunderstorm dropped .37" of water.	Keynote speaker Susan Donaldson shares lessons from a similar high desert climate in Reno, Nevada to the Bend audience.