Anyone Board On The Willamette River In Portland

Going to portland for a week taking the boat to play with some old friends !! Wondering if anyone boards on the willamette river?

No the willamette has had a horrible sewage spill so knowone rides on it anymore its put alot of people in the hospital wont clear up until end of summer

The Willamette is fine so long as you stay above the spill point. Launch at Wilsonville. It's above the falls. It's only like a 15 minute drive south of downtown Portland on I-5. I can't recall which bridge they said it's safe to be in the water upstream of downtown...I think I;d just stay out of the water down there all together.

Below Fremont bridge. Which no one rides that far down. Stay above the falls(Wilsonville) and you'll be fine.

there lying the water sucks the pollution is horrible everywhere. Just for gods sake dont go to the newberg ramp we saW dead cow floating by last night. everyone thst went in the water got a really bad skin rash

mike...you seem to have no idea what you are talking about. Maybe you're just joking around?
Anyway, it is true that the Willamette is not the cleanest river around, but it is really only bad at the lower end. The water above Wilsonville is probably some of the best you will find in Oregon. Also, I'm sure that you have your own deductive reasoning skills, but it's pretty obvious that a dead cow does not equal contaminated water. There is a lot of farm land very close to the Willamette. Finally, I'd like to see some sort of documentation of all these people that got these skin rashes.

WOW !! I guess it's been longer than I thought that I had been back to Portland town!! Used to live on the columbia river in a house boat back in the sixtys water was not that bad back in the day. Where does everyone ride these days closed to portland?? Does anyone ride on the columbia maybe on the government island side of the river from the airport on up to maybe to blue lake or the top end of government island? This is are new look post ex wife this summer!!! Thanks for the help!!

Sorry wombat but it's true what Mike said, the sewage system is designed to dump waste into the river if the rainfall gets too high. Anyone that lives there know it rains a lot!!! Instead of flooding the streets of Portland it releases into the river. Now the river does flow pretty well so the theory is that it will not affect people that get into the water and should flush quickly but sometimes it does. Wilsonville is well above the locks if I am not mistaken so you should not be affected at all by the sewage

Mark, so basically you're agreeing with me?

Exactly, it is only really bad where the cows are dieing and in the lower levels, are you above the locks?
Here is something that will turn your tummy.

http://www.hevanet.com/safewater/willamette.htm

(Message edited by gw_mark on August 01, 2004)