Every other Wednesday, around a dozen volunteers set off to gather water samples from 80 sites across the county before delivering them to the offices of the Tillamook Estuaries Partnership at the Port of Garibaldi.
Staff at the estuaries partnership then test the samples for three types of bacteria and share the results on their website, in an effort that offers local landowners, cities, fishers and residents invaluable insight into their water quality.
“A lot of folks care about clean water,” said Tillamook Estuaries Partnership (TEP) Water Quality Manager York Johnson. “We want to provide the community with information that allows them to make informed decisions and I think it’s really important that it’s community driven.”
The program began in the late 1990s in conjunction with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) after numerous streams in the Tillamook Bay Watershed were identified as not meeting the standards for beneficial recreational use.
Initially sampling 40 freshwater sites in the Tillamook Bay Watershed, the program has since expanded to both estuary and saltwater sites and doubled its scope, now taking samples from each of the county’s watersheds.
Twice a month, volunteers set out on routes that take two to three hours to complete and visit up to 14 different publicly accessible waterways. Once arriving at a site, volunteers write the site’s identifier on a glass container and either make their way to the water or lower a piece of PVC pipe containing the container off a bridge into the water. After completing this process at each of the sites on their route, volunteers drop the samples off in Garibaldi.
Habitat Monitoring Specialist Flynn Delany takes over the process from there. He adds a small packet of sugars into the samples before adding test strips and placing them in an incubator for 24 hours. The following afternoon, he returns and reads the results of the tests before uploading them to TEP’s website, which displays the last three results for each of the sites on an interactive map.
Delany tests for three different species of bacteria, which together signal whether other bacteria are likely to be present in the water.
The sampling and testing process proceeds year-round, rain or shine, which helps Delany and York differentiate between different potential sources of contamination. York said that contamination identified on a sunny day might indicate an infrastructure failure, whereas a rainy-day contamination was more likely to be caused by wildlife or livestock.
In addition to making their data publicly available, TEP works with local governments and landowners to help direct and refine their clean water investments.
York said that this process had borne fruit in the City of Tillamook where testing had helped identify issues with sewer infrastructure, which the city addressed. “One of the really exciting things about having data is we identified this problem, we worked together for a positive solution and then saw improvements from the sites that were associated with this infrastructure issue, so that’s really exciting,” York said.
TEP also works to address other sources of contamination through its riparian planting program, which offers free plants and planting to landowners. The plants are grown in a nursery at the Port of Tillamook.
Although only the three most recent test results are displayed on the website, TEP maintains and will share historical data with those who are interested.
Currently, around 40% of the tested sites are meeting DEQ standards across the county, based on the two-year evaluation window used by TEP.
In addition to the citizen volunteers, TEP also partners with the Nestucca, Neskowin & Sand Lake Watersheds Council to gather samples from more sites in south Tillamook County and the Surfrider Foundation for six beach sites.
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