IV WQM 2024-6

The applicant proposes to perform surface water quality monitoring (grab, continuous, and passive sampling), data analyses, public reporting, and community engagement in the Illinois River subbasin in SW Josephine County.

The Illinois River subbasin lacks forward-looking broad spectrum baseline water quality monitoring data, presenting an incomplete picture of water quality in the Illinois River Basin. This lack of data adversely impacts the ability of the applicant and partners develop effective management strategies. Without clear water quality condition benchmarks across the watershed, restoration and conservation opportunities cannot be responsibly developed and adaptively managed.

Project work furthers the grab sampling surface water quality monitoring regime that was developed and established in 2022 in collaboration with ODA, IVWC, and DEQ, and launches a pilot continuous water quality monitoring project with the US Geological Survey (USGS). It provides a vitally important comprehensive water quality dataset that will be useful to other community partners and neighbors in considering and deciding how to best care for their watershed.

Passive water quality monitoring utilizes samplers (POCIS and SPMD units) that continuously accumulate chemicals from the water during their deployment period, enabling measurements at lower but still biologically relevant concentrations and capturing episodic events such as storms, surface runoff, and spills. They provide information on the time-weighted average concentration of chemicals, vital to assessing the potential risk of exposure for aquatic species.

Partners include USGS, Illinois Valley Watershed Council, Oregon Department of Agriculture, Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, Oregon State University, Rogue Riverkeeper, Grants Pass Water Lab, IEH Analytical Laboratories, Siskiyou Field Institute, partnering landowners, and community members.

The Illinois River in southwestern Oregon is the largest tributary of the Rogue River. The Illinois River is roughly 56 miles long and the river basin drains approximately 983 square miles. The river hosts significant runs of winter steelhead, federally threatened SONCC coho salmon, fall Chinook, sea-run cutthroat, resident cutthroat, winter steelhead, and lamprey. There has never been a major hatchery operation in the Illinois River Basin, thus the salmonid populations native to this area may be among the most genetically intact of any major populations in the Pacific Northwest.

The recent unprecedented levels of intensive unregulated cannabis production activity in the Illinois Valley have raised community awareness and concerns about water quality and associated potential adverse impacts of degraded water quality. Directors of both the IVSWCD and IVWC forwarded those concerns to staff and helped establish our water quality monitoring program. There is a collective sense that ‘if you don’t measure something, you can’t manage it.’ Or at least, you can’t manage it well. Community interest in water quality and quantity is ardent.

A recent passive water quality study in the Salmon Mountains (a neighboring subrange of the Klamath Mountains experiencing similar land uses) (Medel et al., 2022) found organophosphate and carbamate pesticides correlated to unregulated cannabis cultivation sites in low-order streams. These chemicals, linked to adverse effects on fish species and amphibian species of concern, were detected in high-quality habitats. This project will establish baseline data for these dangerous chemicals in the Illinois River watershed.

Data derived from this project will be used to inform work performed the North Illinois Valley Strategic Implementation Area (2024-2028). WQM data will inform land management decisions, nutrient management plans, and best practices for sustainable agriculture. IVWC, our dedicated partner, is actively executing a new and robust Strategic Plan. Their strategic plan includes a significant restoration initiative and separate community engagement components that would be tangibly informed with the water quality data to be collected, documented, and reported as deliverables of this proposal.