Portland’s precious prize: it’s water
Portland’s trees and flowers detonate with the first sun in early May so anxious are they to make their appearance after weeks hiding under the grey Oregon canopy and gentle rain. It’s difficult to keep the grass mowed and one thinks of the water. The trees, flowers and plants love our abundant rain.
Portland’s Japanese Garden
The rain water falls (aprox. 130 inches/year) flows, sometimes floods, collects in the Bull Run River watershed and courses down through its many byways. We drink it ourselves. And therein lies the precious prize, the gift we’ve alternately treasured and despoiled, but always devoured–the prize we’ve now preserved politically, all 10 billion gallons of it–our Bull Run Watershed,, and our Powell Butte, Mt. Tabor and Washington Park reservoirs of clean water!
Bull Run Watershed (Photo by Briggy Thomas)
Douglas Larson describes the fascinating political history of the Bull Run Watershed, Oregon’s “Battle of Bull Run”, in a long article in The American Scientist . Larson’s story has all the elements of a modern Grisham novel: suspense, greed, political maneuvering, scientific foresight, courage and heroism (Dr. Joseph Smith Jr., Bob Packwood?). as well as near environmental suicide.
