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City hears grant pitch to use forest management to protect drinking water
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Summary
A Sustainable Northwest consultant briefed Depoe Bay councilors on how timber management in the North Depoe Bay and Rocky Creek watersheds affects local water supply and outlined a federal grant opportunity to fund planting and forest-health work with timber owners.
Depoe Bay councilors heard on Aug. 19 from Daniel Weir of Sustainable Northwest about how forest-management practices in the city’s source watersheds affect water quality and availability and about a potential grant that could pay for planting and forest-health work. "The water rights that you have legally far exceed the water demand that you have," Weir said, but he warned that stream availability and post‑harvest runoff can interrupt supply.
Weir said the city’s three drinking‑water sources are North Depoe Bay Creek (the preferred intake), Rocky Creek (the larger secondary supply) and a small emergency supply at South Depoe Bay Creek. He gave several figures during the presentation: Depoe Bay’s population is about 1,398 residents, the water district serves roughly 1,000 service connections, the city’s estimated annual maximum demand is about 75 million gallons, and the city holds surface‑water rights totaling 7 cubic feet per second though actual peak withdrawals are closer to 2.5 cfs.
The presentation stressed that intensive, short‑rotation industrial forestry in the watersheds can reduce late‑season streamflow and increase erosion and turbidity after storms. Weir identified major landowners and managers—Hampton, Hancock (investment arm), Starker Forestry, Weyerhaeuser—and said much of North Depoe Bay’s 530‑acre watershed has seen harvests in recent years. He said Rocky Creek is several thousand acres and supplies far more water but also requires long, difficult piping to deliver flow to the treatment plant.
Weir described a federal “community green infrastructure” grant that targets rural and coastal communities and can fund planting or forest‑health work ranging from about $10,000 to $300,000. He said the grant application is due Oct. 13, 2025, and that any city application would require early outreach and agreement with private timber owners before proposing treatments or species changes on their land. He recommended the city consider outreach to timber companies and pairing any grant pursuit with the tax‑lot analysis the city contracted Sustainable Northwest to produce.
City staff and councilors asked whether timber companies would engage and whether the grant could fund acquisition; Weir said acquisition is a possible long‑term approach but that the grant can more readily fund planting and buffer work, which may make timber owners more receptive to targeted changes.
The council took no formal action on the presentation; staff said they would follow up if council wanted to pursue the grant or meet with timber owners.
Background: Weir noted the state’s private‑forest rules changed in recent years and said he would confirm whether recent harvests in the watersheds are governed by the new rules. He also pointed to the city’s notification system that alerts plant operators to timber‑management activity upstream so the plant can watch for post‑harvest turbidity.
