Lower Columbia River Watershed Council

8/19/2005 6:00:00 AM

Jan Jackson
Freelance Writer

RAINIER, Ore. – An abandoned greenhouse on the Rainier Junior/Senior High School campus is the scene of a Columbia County watershed awareness education program supported by the Lower Columbia River Watershed Council, Columbia Soil and Water and Conservation District, Bureau of Land Management, Oregon State University Extension, Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board and the Rainier School District.

In the process of getting training in water quality monitoring protocols (temperature, pH, turbidity, dissolved oxygen and conductivity), macro invertebrate sampling and identification, native plant propagation and riparian restoration techniques, the students will monitor water quality, sample streams for macro invertebrate populations, propagate native vegetation in the school greenhouse and plant native vegetation in selected riparian areas. The additional cost for the school district will be next to nothing.

“The school is built on property that not only has its own wetlands, but it has a great greenhouse that hasn’t been used since 1996,” Margaret Magruder, Clatskanie sheep grower and coordinator of LCRWC, said. “All of the agencies involved in this project try to work with local schools in watershed education and fill in where school funds no longer exist. The more we all thought about the education possibilities at the school, the more excited we became.

“April 22, we held our first workshop and taught volunteers how to identify plants and take cuttings. BLM provided alder, cedar, spruce and hemlock seedlings, and teachers, students and volunteers are already getting them settled in the greenhouse,” she said.

The school, located three miles west of Rainier, was built during the time that the Trojan nuclear power plant provided substantial tax revenues to the district. When the school was built, it included a state-of-the-art greenhouse equipped with electricity, irrigation and a cooling system. When Trojan shut down, the budget had to be cut. In 1996 the greenhouse facility was abandoned.

“We’ve had a lot of work to do just trying to get the place cleaned up and usable again,” Sherry Evans, one of the Rainier schoolteachers working with the project, said.

“Himalayan blackberries were as high as the greenhouse, so the students have been taking those out. They are also sweeping and hauling out debris that has collected from years of disuse. Meanwhile, students have also started planting the seedlings from the BLM,” she said.

“When we first introduced the program to the students they didn’t know what a watershed was,” Evans said. “To help them get the picture, we built a clay model of our own watershed and spent some time walking around in our wetlands. Now, enthusiasm is mounting daily and as we develop multi-levels of the program, we hope to include children from kindergarten on up through high school. The greenhouse really bursts at the seams when the kids arrive and I’m learning a lot myself.”

more photos and comments in this PDF

For information on the greenhouse project, call Margaret Magruder at (503) 728-9015; e-mail her at magruder@clatskanie.com; or contact Chip Bubl, Columbia County OSU Extension at (503) 397-3462, e-mail chip.bubl@orst.edu.