Rock and Richardson Creek Watershed Assessment

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Ecotrust prepared this assessment under contract with the Clackamas River Basin Council. Funding for this assessment was provided by a grant from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board. Contact the Clackamas River Basin Council for additional information on Council activities in Rock and Richardson Creek watersheds and the Clackamas River Basin:

Clackamas River Basin Council
P.O. Box 1869
Clackamas, Oregon 97015
503-650-1256

Preface

The Clackamas River Basin Council chose to allocate its resources to this watershed assessment for several reasons: 1) to better understand the dynamics of Rock and Richardson Creeks 2) to develop partnerships with the community, 3) to be a catalyst for the enhancement and protection of fish and wildlife habitat, 4) to identify actions to improve water quality for drinking water, recreation and fish and wildlife, and 5) to facilitate discussion on the future of urbanization in these two watersheds.

The Council sees the urbanization of these two watersheds as a unique challenge and an opportunity to demonstrate how a community can plan for growth, create productive communities and protect natural resources in an urban area. The Council looks forward to working with private landowners, interest groups, government agencies, local businesses and the development community to create a truly unique watershed community where all can live, work, play and have access to natural areas and clean water; a community where salmon and trout can thrive and other wildlife can live and be seen. It will take creativity, compromise and working together. The Council hopes you will join them in this effort.

Failure to meet the challenge to create urban communities in harmony with natural processes will certainly result in conventional urban development and its various deleterious effects on these watersheds.

Introduction

Purpose

Rock and Richardson Creek watersheds comprise a small, but important part of the Clackamas basin. The total land area of both watersheds is just less than 9,000 acres, compared to the over 500,000 acres of the basin. The total current distribution of anadromous fish of two to three miles within Rock and Richardson Creeks is a mere fraction of the total habitat available in other basin streams.

The importance of these two small streams lies in their unique position at the edge of the Portland urban area and the fact that this area will be substantially urbanized over the next two to twenty years. In a very real sense, it represents an opportunity to demonstrate a new commitment, ability and will to modify human cultural practices to maintain a sustainable landscape through the intersection of healthy ecosystems, healthy communities and vibrant economies.

The Clackamas River Basin Council initiated this watershed assessment to catalyze community involvement in watershed restoration and to offer and alternative to conventional urban development. Conventional urban development destroys or at best severely damages aquatic ecosystems. As land is covered with roads and buildings, rainfall runs quickly off the surface into pipes, then to streams. It flows fast and furious, carrying all manners of dirt, grime, oil, and chemicals directly into streams. Winter and spring flows are higher than they ever were before, resulting in bank erosion, downcutting, and the loss of connection between the stream and floodplain. Riparian areas become weed and trash choked wastelands. Pools silt in, spawning gravels are washed away, and summer flows may dry up altogether. Many urban creeks including neighboring Johnson Creek, were quite good salmon habitat in the 1950s, now they are testimony to the severity and problems posed by conventionally urbanized watersheds. Oregonians have recognized the impacts of our activities on salmonids, aquatic ecosystems and, more broadly, the watersheds and ecosystems that sustain us. The Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board has led the way in developing a process for assessing watershed conditions, and devising means to repair and protect watersheds. Clackamas County has developed a stream protection ordinance and surface water regulations. The Oregon Legislature passed Senate Bill 1010 to improve agricultural practices near streams. Metro has adopted Title 3 stream protection rules, which were incorporated into the May 1, 2000 Clackamas County Service District #1 Surface Water Management Rules and Regulations. The State Forestry Board is developing new stream buffer protections for forest practices. The State's "Three Basin Rule" limits point discharges into the Clackamas Basin. Citizens have become more aware of the magnitude of the challenge. But now that we know better, can we do better? What will it take to do so?

The intent of this assessment is to provide a framework for action based on a review of the many recent studies that have been completed in this area. The Clackamas Basin Atlas, funded by the Environmental Protection Agency and coordinated by Metro, provides a basin-wide perspective on the entire area. Metro followed up this effort with a landscape study focused on Rock and Richardson Creeks. Pacific Rivers Council and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) have done fish surveys and analyzed the health of aquatic life. During the development of this assessment Clackamas County was in the midst of completing a stormwater management plan for the proposed urban areas. This assessment summarizes the findings of these and several other studies, and provides a context for moving forward with creek protection and restoration. This assessment is based on the watershed assessment framework in the Oregon Watershed Assessment Manual. As a brief summary of existing studies it represents a snapshot of our current knowledge of Rock and Richardson watersheds. New studies continue to generate new information about these watersheds even as this assessment is completed. While this document is static, the assessment process itself should be viewed as dynamic. As new information develops, knowledge and understanding of the status and conditions of these watersheds will continue to evolve.

Background: watershed landscapes and history

Rock and Richardson Creek watersheds are part of the ecosystem known as the East Buttes and Boring Lava Domes of southeast Multnomah and North Clackamas Counties. These hills, rising 500 to 1,000 feet above the valley floors, were created by lava flows some two million years ago. They are part of the same eruption cycle that built Mt. Hood. The low, mostly forested hills meet level to gently sloping valley floors, including Pleasant and Sunshine valleys. The streams cut down into narrow canyons as they reach the more erodable soils south of Sunnyside Road and Highway 212.

These two watersheds have several differences as well as similarities. Rock Creek watershed is more than twice as large in area as Richardson Creek watershed. Richardson Creek itself has a consistently steep gradient and flows in large part through a forested zone. Rock Creek is more of a meandering stream, particularly where it winds across Pleasant Valley, but falls more steeply in the lower reaches through a forested canyon. Both watersheds are dominated by rural residential land uses with a housing density no greater than one house per acre, but some high density housing — with three or more houses per acre — is present in the southwestern portion of the Rock Creek watershed. As illustrated by the table below, both watersheds have very similar land cover characteristics. Agriculture dominates over one third of the landscape, and more than two fifths of both watersheds are covered by forest canopy

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