News Release
| Release Number: | 05-062 |
| Dated: | 5/9/2005 |
| Contact: | Heidi Y. Helwig, 503-808-4510 |
Portland, Ore.--The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is joining efforts with the Fern Ridge community to rid the Fern Ridge Reservoir shoreline of litter and to celebrate the dam’s pending repairs.
At 9 a.m., on Saturday, May 21, Corps employees will join community members in the Fern Ridge Reservoir shoreline cleanup, as part of a statewide “Down by the Riverside” event sponsored by Stop Oregon Litter and Vandalism (SOLV). Volunteers can participate in the cleanup at one of two locations: Perkins Peninsula Park on Hwy 126 on the south shore of Fern Ridge Reservoir, or Orchard Point Park on Clear Lake Road at the east end of the dam. For more information about the cleanup, call the City of Veneta at (541) 935-2191 or visit the SOLV website at www.solv.org.
Members of the public participating in the cleanup will be restricted to areas of the lakebed open to the public. There may be areas of the lakebed that will be closed for public safety or to provide additional protection for natural resources and wildlife habitat.
Following the cleanup, community leaders and the Corps’ Willamette Valley personnel will participate in a brief ceremony to kickoff Fern Ridge Dam repairs. Members of the public are welcome and are asked to park in the Kirk Park parking area located at the northeast end of the dam on Clear Lake Road. The ceremony will begin at 11:30 a.m.
“The Corps is eager to get the repairs underway so that we can return the reservoir and its benefits back to the community,” said Willamette Valley Operations Manager Erik Petersen. The contractor awarded the repair work will be announced at the ceremony.
The Corps and the contractor will work together to develop an aggressive repair strategy with the goal of completing repairs before the start of the flood damage reduction season in November.
“What we are doing is compressing a two-year construction schedule into one year,” said Portland District Engineer Col. Richard Hobernicht. Though a November 2005 completion is the goal, Hobernicht acknowledged that weather-related delays and other unknown factors could delay completion of the repairs. “We may not complete the work until 2006,” he said, meaning communities would be without the reservoir for a second year. “Be assured, though, everyone I have spoken with has committed to do all they can to meet the one-year schedule.”
More information about Fern Ridge Dam and why repairs are needed can be found on the Corps’ Top Issues web site at https://www.nwp.usace.army.mil/issues/fernridge/cms/home.asp.