StreamBank® Historiography

Founded in 1983 by a group of fly-fishing conservationists, Oregon Trout started the wild fish discussion in the Pacific Northwest, working to protect and restore native fish and their ecosystems. Much of Oregon Trout’s early work centered on advocacy: listing fish species under the Endangered Species Act and promoting conservation legislation such as Measure 66, a successful statewide initiative to dedicate lottery dollars to watershed restoration. In addition, Oregon Trout engaged in cooperative restoration projects, most notably the $2+ million Wood River project (1996-2001, see Wood River Final Report). In 1993, Oregon Trout launched its first education program, Salmon Watch® (see http://www.ortrout.org/salmonWatch.html), which matured into a statewide effort taking 5,000 students annually out on salmon streams in the fall. While remaining true to its original mission, Oregon Trout evolved from a niche interest group to an organization that seeks holistic and watershed-wide approaches to the root causes of declines in water health.

2000 – Joe S. Whitworth hired as Executive Director, with a mandate from the board to chart a new direction for the organization and expand effort.

At the end of 2002, Oregon Trout had a problem. Like many conservation groups, Oregon Trout was historically dependent on grants for much of its budget. Troubled markets in 2001 and 2002 meant a low giving year for many foundations. Cuts from many of Oregon Trout’s supporters led to a 20% budget deficit for the year. Executive Director Joe Whitworth and the Board of Directors convened a strategic planning session to evaluate program efforts and decide between two outcomes: recapitalize the organization and send it in a new direction, or kill it. The result was the Core Strength Campaign. The Oregon Trout Board of Directors recapitalized the organization with a $1 million collective commitment to move the organization dynamically forward along two main courses (see Core Strength Campaign):

Education. Oregon Trout would expand its education effort beyond Salmon Watch. Conversations with stakeholders around the state led to the design of the Healthy Waters Institute.

Habitat. Foregoing the advocacy focus of the past, Oregon Trout would now center its conservation effort on habitat restoration projects, with an eye towards major efforts such as the recently completed Wood River project.

Oregon Trout pursued its new mandate in earnest. Education staff worked to deliver Salmon Watch® while developing new curriculum. Habitat staff investigated potential projects, focusing on basins of particular importance to fish recovery. By year’s end, the education department efforts were paying off and a new concept for statewide education delivery was forming. On the habitat side, however, staff voiced mounting frustration. There was plenty of work to do, but getting the machinery of restoration moving at a faster pace proved challenging. Early meetings with landowners, restoration professionals and agencies made one thing clear: there was little synergy around river and stream restoration.

Executive Director Joe Whitworth had long believed that the pace and scale of watershed restoration work was far too slow. A 1998 EPA estimate of stream health in Oregon rated 26% (30,000) of Oregon’s 115,000 stream miles as “poor” (failing to support aquatic life, see National Water Quality Report to Congress 1998-Oregon). Based on completed projects reported to Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board and other agencies, Oregon was restoring about 100 stream miles per year – a pace that would require 300 years to fix every stream in the state. Given the looming pressures of climate change and population growth, the pace had to increase dramatically.

With this in mind, Whitworth met with NOAA Fisheries. He had what he thought was a simple question regarding Section 1539(10)(a)(1)(A) of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), which states:

“The Secretary [of Commerce] may permit, under such terms and conditions as he shall prescribe, any act otherwise prohibited by section 1538 of this title for scientific purposes or to enhance the propagation or survival of the affected species, including, but not limited to, acts necessary for the establishment and maintenance of experimental populations... "

Knowing Oregon Trout’s history, the folks at NOAA at first thought Whitworth had found a new way to sue them, illustrating the often troubled history of conservation groups and agencies. In reality, Whitworth simply wanted to know if this section provided wide latitude for conservation work intended to benefit endangered species. In other words, habitat restoration on private land that benefited listed fish should be able to move forward with greater ease than was the case on the ground. NOAA officials didn’t immediately know the answer, but were intrigued by the notion of expediting restoration work using the ESA as a wedge.

The meeting showed that agencies were generally scrambling to get their collective heads around restoration effort; that they didn’t have a cohesive vision of how to go about doing this work efficiently. Agencies may be open to exploring better methods, as NOAA demonstrated, but leadership for that effort could best originate outside, from the private sector—ultimately, from the landowner.

Whitworth and Oregon Trout now understood the problem well enough to articulate it: disconnected agency “silos” presented barriers to restoration action at two critical points in the path of a project. First, securing funds was time consuming and complicated, with different agencies having different evaluation criteria and operating on different timelines. Conservation groups and landowners would often spend years compiling the resources necessary to fund even simple projects. Oregon Trout’s experience was no different. By 2005, the organization was already a year into planning a project on Oregon’s South Coast that required only 40-60 hours of actual dirt work (NOTE: that project was not implemented until 2007, over 3 years after initial project design). The second barrier? Permitting. Often requiring months of review by two or three different federal, state and local agencies, permitting of restoration work is a major headache for conservation groups and landowners. In effect, the strict guidelines put in place decades earlier to keep bad things from happening on streams were now keeping good things from happening. That had to change. Some method for expediting work that would benefit watersheds must be developed if pace and scale were to increase.

With these challenges in mind, Oregon Trout sought and received seed money from the Jubitz Family Foundation to pursue efficiencies in the system for restoration, an effort called “The Blue Ribbon Project.” By late 2005, the basic concept of StreamBank® was well formed – a web-based tool to simplify landowner access to resources and permits, to effectively remove the barriers to restoration action and accelerate pace and scale of restoration work. Whitworth drafted an internal white paper describing the program, codename BLUE (see BLUE White Paper 12-05).

Early in 2006, Whitworth tasked Oregon Trout staff with compiling a database of all known restoration funding programs from state and federal agencies. A few weeks into the job, frustrated grants coordinator Marley Gaddis summed up the issue in a sentence: “They all want the same thing, they just say it in different ways!” The clear conclusion: each agency was seeking the same, basic outcomes, but used different language and different metrics to pursue them. In the meantime, Fish Refuge Program Director Mark McCollister had uncovered a document from Philip Roni et al at NOAA Fisheries outlining a list of restoration techniques on rivers and streams, basically concluding that there was a finite number of ways to fix a stream (14 or so, see A Review of Stream Restoration Techniques Roni et al 2002).

These findings verified the theory behind StreamBank®: that the funding universe and the restoration universe were definable, that the common denominators were manageable. In other words, it was possible to build an algorithm to translate funding criteria into a common vernacular and connect that with the defined universe of restoration actions, and to do it instantaneously. Theoretically, at least, such an algorithm could automate the process of funding a restoration project. If funds from various sources were pooled, this algorithm could automatically match up each funder with restoration actions that met their individual criteria, and eliminate the process of application and review. The resulting “fund of funds” could effectively remove one of the two major barriers to restoration action (see StreamBank PowerPoint 1.0).

Politically, of course, the challenge was far greater. Getting buyoff and participation from agencies would be difficult, even at low levels. Also, in a world of finite funding, issues of prioritization must be addressed. But Whitworth believed these could be resolved and proceeded with the project in earnest. The strategy: secure additional investment and build a working prototype of the web tool to demonstrate the concept, and then approach agencies and private investors for support.

Around the same time, recognizing the need to expand general organizational capacity in order to continue education expansion and push StreamBank®, Whitworth hired Managing Director Alan Horton to revamp fundraising and operations and help implement the new programs, including StreamBank®.

The next challenge was to refine the StreamBank® concept and solicit investment to develop a beta version of the software and supporting program materials. Whitworth and Horton developed a new pitch document (see StreamBank PowerPoint 2.0) and Whitworth went on tour.

Over the next few months, Whitworth pitched again and again, mostly to private foundations and philanthropists, proselytizing and refining his arguments. By the end of June 2006, he had the pitch down, and Whitworth and Horton produced two documents that proved pivotal: the StreamBank Executive Summary, and a far more refined pitch document, both still in use today and under continual refinement (see StreamBank Executive Summary and StreamBank PowerPoint 3.0).

Practiced and ready, with theories well supported and arguments well defined, Whitworth went to Tim Boyle’s office on in June 2006 and boldly asked him for support to develop StreamBank® and fund early rounds of project implementation. After a few more meetings, Boyle responded on August 25, 2006 with a firm commitment for $380,000 to develop a working prototype of the tool. This still stood as the single largest gift in Oregon Trout’s history, and set the stage for significant investment to come.

With funds in hand, Whitworth and Horton huddled with Conservation Director Brett Brownscombe and Fish Refuge Program Director Mark McCollister to develop a game plan. They needed several things quickly:

1. StreamBank® development plan through 2007
2. A storyboard for the web-based software tool
3. An RFP to find the software company to actually write the code
4. A short- and mid-term strategy for engaging partners

By October 2006, the “Stream Team”, as the four called themselves, were ready to move. The first Boyle check was in the mail, and it was time to hire the software guys. Enter Formos.

There are many software companies, but few good ones. Oregon Trout needed a group that could translate their restoration knowledge and vision into an effective, powerful and user-friendly tool. The Stream Team’s RFP went out to several recommended companies.

Time mattered. Whitworth wanted to finish a mock up of the tool in time for a December board meeting, to maintain momentum and generate board excitement for StreamBank® as a major push in 2007. By late October, the software company had yet to be hired. Finally, a proposal came back from Formos, one so far ahead of the competition that the selection was simple.

Formos almost passed on the job. Concerned about working with a non-profit that lacked software development experience, they feared a process-heavy quagmire. But they took the shot, and this working relationship has been the cornerstone of StreamBank’s success ever since. Formos demonstrated great capacity for translating Whitworth’s vision and the Stream Team’s instruction into coded reality, first with a quick mock up and later with the working tool.

At the December 2006 board meeting, Whitworth and Horton wowed the board with the one-two punch of the StreamBank® demo and a 2007 organizational budget of $2.1 million, over two times the 2005 budget and a big step up from 2006. They were driving the organization in new directions. The goal for 2007 was simple: build a working version of the tool, and test it on the ground. Oregon Trout was rolling.

Software is logical. It delivers what you ask of it. The more clear you are in the beginning, the better the software. Brownscombe and McCollister had the tough job of translating restoration work into story boards, and Formos had the equally tough job of translating the story boards into functional software. Early development goals were tight: to complete a working version, with two restoration actions (fencing and in-stream wood placement) completed by the end of Q1. But they did it, and the first fully functional version of StreamBank® was online (see StreamBank Web Tool Run-Through 4-07).

In the mean time, Whitworth was sill pitching, setting the stage for StreamBank® partnerships down the road. Of primary importance was money. Boyle’s commitment would pay for the software, but more money was needed to fund the pilot projects on the ground. Al Jubitz and the Jubitz Family Foundation maintained their commitment to StreamBank®, as they had since 2005, but still more was needed. Meyer Memorial Trust showed some interest in the concept, and Whitworth focused his energies there, with a formal proposal and a lot of politicking (see Meyer Memorial Trust Proposal 2007).

Whitworth also set the stage for agency involvement by engaging Oregon Solutions to evaluate StreamBank® as a project. Oregon Solutions (O/S) is a state-sponsored group based at Portland State University with a long history of developing cooperative solutions among state agencies for singular problems (see http://www.orsolutions.org for more information). Whitworth believed Oregon Solutions an ideal convener of potential agency partners at the right time, likely 2008. First, however, O/S had to evaluate the project, as they only select a handful of initiatives each year.

Effort continued on software, communications and fundraising, with an eye towards on-the-ground testing in late summer/fall. Meyer Memorial Trust came through with $250,000 to fund the pilot projects as well as the O/S evaluation process.

By summer 2007, the web tool was ready for a real world test. Brownscombe scheduled three pilot projects that could test the tool in various ways, on the Elk River on the South Coast, Marys River near Corvallis, and Sandy River near Portland (see http://www.ortrout.org/pilotProjects.html for more information). In August, Brownscombe held the first meetings with landowners and the local project coordinators and took them through the web tool. Initial reaction was, simply, everything the Stream Team hoped for (see Landowner and Local Coordinator Reaction). As Harry Hoogestegger, the South Coast project coordinator put it:

“This is a new way of restoring our watershed. It has the potential to revolutionize fish recovery not only in Oregon but throughout the Northwest. It’s amazing to be able to design and fund a complex, multi-faceted restoration project in essentially a couple of hours. We put together components of fencing, planting, off-stream watering and the addition of large wood… worked out a budget, located the project and identified sources of funding. Usually that would take me several months. This morning it took a couple of hours.”

On the permitting side, Oregon Trout and Formos had developed an electronic application process for a frequently required permit from the Department of State Lands (DSL) for placement of large wood instream. They tested it on the South Coast pilot, coordinating with DSL on a broader effort to facilitate permits of this type. For that project, the DSL permit was obtained only 20 days after application, with the corresponding US Army Corps of Engineers (US ACE) permit coming 10 days later. This is very, very fast by any objective measure. In combination, the testing of DSL’s new process and the demonstration of the electronic application procedure showed that you could dramatically speed up the permitting process.

By the end of Q3, the projects were well under way, and all systems were “go.”

With the pilot projects largely wrapped by the December 2007 board meeting, Whitworth was able to report with confidence that StreamBank® worked (see StreamBank Case Study). The theory was sound: it was possible to fund projects with software, still hit agency criteria and maintain project quality. In addition, permits could be streamlined using a “general authorization” approach, as DSL had piloted, and by automating the paperwork through StreamBank®.

Armed with evidence, Whitworth and DSL director Louise Solliday approached Governor Ted Kulongoski with a formal request for an Oregon Solutions process to facilitate agency partnership with StreamBank® in 2008 and beyond (see Request for Oregon Solutions).

The successful pilots triggered three other key events. First, Oregon Trout and Formos submitted a patent application for the StreamBank® software and concept. Second, Tim Boyle re-committed for the 2008 StreamBank effort with a new pledge of $380,000, and Al Jubitz committed $500,000 through the Jubitz Family Foundation for on-the-ground work through StreamBank® in 2008 and 2009. Armed with nearly $1 million in commitments and a patent pending, Oregon Trout entered 2008 with huge momentum.

2008 started with a bang: the Governor agreed to designate StreamBank® as an Oregon Solutions project (see Governor’s OS Designation Letter) and Mike Keiser, owner of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort on Oregon’s South Coast, committed $200,000 to help fund additional StreamBank® pilot projects in 2008. In addition, Meyer Memorial Trust and several funding agencies indicated an interest in helping fund pilot projects through StreamBank® in 2008, a “hoped for” but not “planned for” outcome.

By the end of Q1, the budget for a larger round of 12-20 test projects in 2008 was largely set: about $600,000 in private investment was secured for direct project costs, with tentative commitments for $400,000 more in agency funds – enough to test StreamBank® at scale. Next step: set the projects, finish the latest version of the web tool, wrap up Oregon Solutions and get the projects underway.