County to consider temporary checkpoints, passes to ease Sauvie Island beach congestion

Columbia County commissioners heard a proposal June 18 from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to limit vehicle access past a checkpoint on Reader Road on busy summer weekends and holidays to reduce congestion, improve emergency access and curb unsafe parking near Sauvie Island beaches.

Steve Namala, watershed manager for ODFW, told the board that on hot, sunny weekends the narrow, mostly single‑lane Reader Road can “saturate with vehicular and pedestrian traffic” and that a recent traffic counter logged about 4,700 events on a single Sunday. He said that day was the highest since 2022 and that consultants estimated peak flows that day reached about 583 vehicles per hour entering around midmorning, with sustained high volumes in the afternoon that produce long queues and block emergency access.

Namala said ODFW proposes a temporary seasonal rule, implemented as a pilot, that would require both the agency’s parking permit and a limited free entry pass for vehicles to proceed past the proposed checkpoint at the intersection of Reader Road and Rednarrow Road on weekends and holidays. ODFW would operate the checkpoint and post signs at the county road intersections;…