A year later – where’s the Wild and Scenic Molalla River bill?

November 18, 2010 | Clean Water, Protecting Rivers, Wild and Scenic Rivers

Exactly one year ago on November 19th, 2009, Oregon Congressman Kurt Schrader’s Wild and Scenic Molalla River bill passed the House of Representatives. Of course this was no surprise to American Rivers or the Molalla River Alliance who know how special this river is and have been working to protect it for a couple of years. The Molalla River provides clean drinking water to the cities of Canby and Molalla and has spectacular cold water habitat for salmon and trout. The local community including the local Molalla police, the City of Molalla, Clackamas County, and many different recreation and user groups want to see this river permanently protected as a National Wild and Scenic River.

But where is the Molalla River bill now? While it passed the House, it has been waiting for year to pass the Senate. Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley co-sponsored this bill in the Senate. The Senate though, has been slow to act to pass the Molalla River bill or any other Oregon Wild and Scenic River bill from the current Congress. Check out a recent article from Change.org that calls for the Senate to act now during the lame-duck Congress to pass some of these bills.

If you want to see the Molalla River designated as a Wild and Scenic River, take action by sending an email to Congress asking them to pass legislation for public lands, water and wildlife now. Otherwise the Molalla could be waiting a while for the protection that it needs.

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