City Hall Notebook

Portland's City Council discusses land management in the Bull Run Watershed. Oregon Wild comments.

Portland and the federal government are changing how they run the wilderness where Portland's drinking water begins.

The Bull Run Management Area covers 142,000 acres northwest of Government Camp. The U.S. Forest Service owns most of the land, but Portland owns about 4 percent -- and the two groups manage it together. Such sharing is "highly unusual," forest service official Gary Larsen told the City Council on Wednesday. Sharing presents problems, such as navigating the two very different public comment processes that city and federal law mandate.

So the sides have spent seven years working out an agreement on how to share power and decide who manages security, conservation education and other jobs. Two proposals have drawn some protest from environmental groups. One has the city taking over maintaining roads in Bull Run. About 238 miles of roads now run through the area, the Water Bureau's Edward Campbell said, and federal crews are working to cut that down to 168 miles.

More contentious is a proposal to trade some scattered parcels of city land for equal areas of federal land around the reservoirs, giving Portland more control of its water supply. Such a trade removes from those lands federal environmental laws governing logging and other uses. Campbell said the city could pass a law copying federal protections and use restrictive land deeds to protect the area. But he didn't propose such an ordinance, after environmentalists asked him to slow down.

Oregon Wild executive director Regna Merritt said any law this council passes could be undone. "The fact that the land that would come to the city is waterfront property makes it more tempting for a future City Council to develop it," she said.

The council voted to move ahead on the agreement, but any land swap must come back for council approval.