Photo Credit: Arturo Leyva

Community Impact

By Lauren Goldberg, Executive Director
Originally published in Columbia Riverkeeper “Currents” Issue 2, 2024

When I started volunteering at Columbia Riverkeeper in fall 2005, the organization had two staff members and a network of volunteers, mainly concentrated in the Columbia River Gorge and Portland. Fast forward to 2024: our staff is 21 strong, we have over 16,000 members and supporters, and our network of volunteers spans multiple river communities, from the Lower Columbia to the Hanford Reach and beyond. Communities are making an impact for the Columbia—demanding clean water, climate action, and strong salmon runs.

By supporting the team at Columbia Riverkeeper, you advance critical outreach and education in river communities and online. To be clear, the outreach and education run two ways. We listen. We field tough questions that push us to dig deeper, from the community members who watchdog changes in their neighborhood (“I’ve noticed an increase in oil-train traffic”) to kids who ask tough questions (“Why do pipes pump pollution into the river we swim in?”) to concerned parents and grandparents (“Why is radioactive tank waste at Hanford still buried underground?).

In the last year, Columbia Riverkeeper’s staff hosted or participated in over 45 events in more than a dozen communities up and down the river. Let’s not forget the webinar, either, our old friend from the pandemic. We continued to host our popular webinars series—featuring journalists, scientists, and cultural experts—on our Columbia Riverkeeper YouTube channel. Here, we feature a handful of the inspiring events that united communities for clean water and climate action.

Sense of Place and Fisher Poets

Legal Director Miles Johnson shared powerful insights into the effort to restore Columbia and Snake River salmon. In January, Miles spoke to a packed house at the popular Sense of Place lecture series in Hood River, OR, hosted by the Mt. Adams Institute. The next month, Miles headed to Astoria to present (and exchange fishing stories) at the Fisher Poets Gathering.