Sandy River Basin

About

The lushly forested Sandy River basin delivers drinking water to Portland and provides cold-water refuge for the summer migration of threatened salmon and steelhead from the Columbia River. Decades ago, in an effort to minimize flood risk, the Sandy was straightened and channelized, cutting the river off from its floodplain. 

In 1999, the Sandy River Basin Partners (Partners) was formed, and The Freshwater Trust (then known as Oregon Trout) led the development a holistic restoration strategy—a ranked framework for identifying the most efficient projects that address the aquatic and floodplain habitat restoration needs.

Guided by this strategy, TFT and Partners have been working with federal, state, local, and private funders since 2008 to fund and implement large wood placement, side channel and floodplain reconnection, and fish passage improvement projects at prioritized sites on public lands in the Upper Sandy.  

After more than two decades of steady progress, the Sandy continues to see improved fish returns, making it an exception to the downward trajectories seen in many other Pacific Northwest rivers. For example, in 2023 (the most recent year data is available), outmigrating steelhead and Coho populations in the Salmon River and Still Creek have increased 200%, on average, over 2010 populations, a strong indicator that habitat restoration is helping achieve the target of healthy, sustainable populations. We anticipate that all Upper Sandy basin restoration projects can be completed in the next 5 to 10 years, thus increasing resilience for this basin in the face of climate change.

Most recently, we’ve been taking what we've learned from floodplain restoration for fish habitat and applying these same floodplain restoration approaches to help reduce the risk of floods downriver for local communities, potentially saving lives and large sums of disaster recovery spending in the future.