Portland District News

Corps bracing for another challenging water year in Willamette Basin

DoD News — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 16:51:48 GMT

Despite substantial help from recent rain and snow events, Army water managers are bracing for another challenging year as they work to refill 13 Willamette Valley reservoirs for the upcoming conservation season.

That sounds fishy: demonized trash fish finally gets some respect

Tom Conning, Public Affairs Office — Mon, 18 Oct 2021 17:30:00 GMT

Leaves are changing, the weather is cooling and getting wetter, and Fred Meyer is stocking its shelves with Christmas decorations, which means it’s October. Instead of skipping ahead to winter holidays, let’s fall back and celebrate autumn and Halloween by highlighting a fish that has been demonized in the past, partly for its looks, and partly for our past perceptions of it as a blood-sucking, bottom-feeding trash fish*: the Pacific lamprey.

That sounds fishy: twisting traps troll tributaries in the Willamette

Tom Conning, Public Affairs Office — Thu, 17 Jun 2021 19:13:29 GMT

The bulky contraptions float listlessly downstream of three dams in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. The buoyant, metal devices hold large screws that the water flow turns. This twist of the screw – creating a creaking, rasping, scraping sound – generates enough hydraulics to keep small fish from escaping the slowly spinning, cone-shaped collectors – or, screw traps.