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vegetation. These projects can also provide the same, similar or better benefits in flood damage 

 and erosion reductions. We now know that it is not necessary to assume that environmental 

 values must be sacrificed to achieve our engineering objectives. H.R. 4289 recognizes this fact 

 and encourages citizens and agencies to work together to combine sound engineering with 

 ecological restoration that will provide multiple benefits to the surrounding communities. 



The status of our nation's urban waterways has not been as well documented as other 

 aquatic ecosystems. We know, however, in the Portland metropolitan region, that we have lost 

 more than 90% of the wetlands, sloughs and open water habitat in the ancient floodplain of the 

 Columbia River*. The Tualatin River, Johnson Creek and Columbia Slough are all water quality 

 limited water bodies and the City of Portland is currently engaged in an effort to reduce Combined 

 Sewer Overflows into the Willamette River, at a cost of over $750 million. Many of our most 

 degraded urban waterways are situated in inner city neighborhoods where resources to clean up 

 the water and restore riparian and wetland habitats and other beneficial uses has historically 

 been. 



I am here to offer our support of H.R. 4289 to address the fact that our nation's waterways 

 are known to be in a degraded condition. Too little attention has been focused in the past on the 

 need to link ecological and social issues to ecosystem restoration. We feel that H.R. 4289 makes 

 that connection between biological and community restoration which the Coalition to Restore 

 Urban Waters believes lies at the heart of restoring our nation's urban waterways. 



EXAMPLES OF SUCCESSFUL AND UNSUCCESSFUL PROJECTS 



The provisions of H.R. 4289 are modeled after one of the most successful urban waterway 

 restoration programs in the United States. The state of California's Department of Water 

 Resources urban waterway restoration program has had a successful track record over the past 

 ten years. One of the most important elements of this program is the requirement that citizen 

 groups must form partnerships with local agencies and jurisdictions and visa versa. This model 

 fosters cooperation in solving waterway restoration problems and is at the heart of H.R. 4289. 

 With limited financial and human resources we need to craft new approaches to solving 

 environmental remediation. H.R. 4289 establishes a new restoration paradigm which recognizes 

 that to be successful, and to move through local, state and federal permit processes, holistic and 

 ecologically-oriented restoration efforts require a "bottoms up", grassroots approach. 



Two examples of successful projects are the Johnson Creek Watershed in Portland, Oregon 

 and Wildcat and San Pablo Creeks in North Richmond, California. These projects are interesting 

 in that they had different origins but both ultimately recognized the importance of early public 

 involvement and cooperation with government agencies. In the case of Johnson Creek earlier 

 agency-driven efforts to address flood reduction objectives, which were focused only on flooding 

 issues and not on multiobjective management of the stream for its multiple values, failed because 

 the general public and neighborhood groups were not provided a range of lower cost, more 

 environmentally sensitive project options. More recent efforts to address flooding and water 

 quality problems in the Johnson Creek watershed have been successful because the City of 

 Portland's Bureau of Environmental Services engaged numerous neighborhood, conservation 

 group, business and agency representatives in a holistic, watershed-oriented planning process. 

 Restoration projects have been planned and implemented at the neighborhood level utilizing 

 volunteers, including at-risk youth and private property owners. 



Wildcat and San Pablo Creeks offer another example of community-base restoration that 

 also addressed flooding issues 5 . What began as a single-purpose U. S. Army Corps of Engineers 



