page_title: Portland Water Bureau
section_title: Protecting the supply
hierarchical_section_title: Portland Water Bureau / History / Protecting the supply
caption_attribution_description: English: Locked gate at the western entrance to the Bull Run Management Unit near Bull Run, Oregon, in the United States.
context_page_description: The Portland Water Bureau is the municipal water department for the city of Portland in the U.S. state of Oregon. The bureau manages a water supply that comes mainly from the Bull Run River in the foothills of the Cascade Range east of the city and secondarily from the Columbia South Shore Well Field near the Columbia River. As of 2015, Nick Fish is the city commissioner in charge of the bureau, and the chief administrator is Michael Stuhr. Budgeted departmental revenues for fiscal year 2015–16 included about $157 million for charges for services.
context_section_description: To protect the water supply from contamination, the committee sought federal help in reducing logging and tree-clearing in the watershed. In 1892, President Benjamin Harrison, using powers granted to him by the Forest Reserve Act of 1891, established the Bull Run Forest Reserve, later included in the Bull Run National Forest. This law prohibited settlement in the 142,000-acre (570 km²) reserve and made it easier for the committee to acquire private land and water rights in the basin.
  Despite the new restrictions, fishing, hunting, camping, and cattle and sheep grazing were still allowed. The committee sought further restrictions, and in 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt signed into law the Bull Run Trespass Act to further protect the reserve and the water. Over the next half-century, the Portland Water Board, the committee's successor, added diversion structures, storage reservoirs, treatment equipment, and water conduits to the original system. However, by the mid-1950s, the City of Portland and the United States Forest Service began to strongly disagree about logging in and public access to the watershed. In 1959, the Forest Service opened 42,500 acres (172 km²) to recreation, and in 1960 Congress passed the Multiple-Use – Sustained Yield Act that, among other things, stressed timber production in the national forests. Between the late 1950s and 1976, the Forest Service allowed about 8,700 acres (35 km²) to be logged in the reserve.
  Ruling on a citizen lawsuit, Miller v. Mallery, Judge James M. Burns agreed in 1976 that logging in the reserve violated the Trespass Act of 1904. He ordered that further recreation, logging, and hydropower development cease in the reserve. Because it wanted to develop hydropower along the Bull Run River, the City of Portland sought revised legislation. U.S. Representative Robert B. Duncan and U.S. Senator Mark Hatfield introduced such legislation, which led in 1977 to passage of the Bull Run Watershed Management Act. It established the Bull Run Watershed Management Unit (BRWMU) and removed Portland's control over the fraction of the reserve that had been opened to recreation in 1959. Although the new law allowed hydropower production within the BRWMU, the unit's main purpose was to produce pure drinking water for the City of Portland and other entities in the Portland metropolitan area. Shortly thereafter, the City built the Portland Hydroelectric Project, which included two powerhouses and a transmission line. Logging did not immediately cease in the unit because the new law allowed activities unless they could be shown to reduce water quality. While the City and the Forest Service worked on water-quality standards, logging continued on a smaller scale, including a 1983 operation to salvage about 1,700 acres (6.9 km²) of trees downed by a windstorm. Between 1958 and 1993, when all timber-cutting operations ceased in the BRWMU, about 14,500 acres (59 km²), roughly 22 percent of the water-supply drainage, had been logged.
  Subsequent legislation affecting the watershed included federal designation in 1994 of about 75 percent of the BRWMU as a reserve for protecting the Northern Spotted Owl and other species dependent on old-growth forests. This designation further restricted logging. In 1996, the Oregon Resources Conservation Act generally prohibited logging on all Forest Service lands within the Bull Run water-supply drainage and another 3,500 acres (14 km²) of land that drained to the lower Bull Run River. In 2001, President George W. Bush signed the Little Sandy Act, which extended the prohibitions to the entire BRWMU and expanded it to include public lands along the Little Sandy River, a tributary of the Bull Run River. In addition, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Water Act, the Northwest Forest Plan, and the Endangered Species Act all regulate the unit.
  Although the BRWMU is generally closed to the public, the Portland Water Bureau offers tours of the watershed, usually in the summer or fall. In addition, the Pacific Crest Trail, heavily used for hiking, crosses the watershed al
caption: A locked gate and fence on Southeast Waterworks Road (National Forest Development Road 10) restrict entry to the western end of the Bull Run Management Unit.
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