Talk:Bull Run River (Oregon)/Archive 1

Merge Proposal

Oppose merge. There is enough material on the watershed to merit a separate article from the geographic entry. Merging means the info about the actual river would get lost in the shuffle, and the watershed is important enough to the city of Portland that it merits a separate article. Katr67 (talk) 05:34, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Oppose merge. I agree with Katr67. I'm hoping to eventually expand the river article to include a brief summary of the watershed article and a "main article" link to it. I have some material about Bull Run River fish, kayaking, and some other river stuff that I'd like to add to the river article (if nobody beats me to it). Also, I'm thinking that eventually the Bull Run River article might be included in a featured topic package with five other major-minor Portland streams; four of them are already featured, and the fifth Tryon Creek is in pretty good shape but still needs work. Also, it might be possible to improve Willamette River to GA or FA; Columbia River is already GA. If the six smaller streams plus the two big rivers all were improved to GA or FA, we would have a complete set of high-quality river articles for Portland. That would make a fairly grand featured topic. Finetooth (talk) 18:07, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Oppose Agree with the above. Also, the majority of the watershed is interestingly unique in its restricted human access. Most of the river, at least below reservoir 2, is not restricted. In essence, the watershed is usable by wildlife; the river is open to all. -EncMstr

Hmmm. I was intending to support; it seems that the material about the river and the watershed overlaps so heavily. It's hard for me to imagine this could be too much for just one article -- and if it does grow too big, there might be other/better ways to split it up (e.g., Bull Run River/Water supply of Portland, Oregon/Logging in the Bull Run watershed) However, I think both Katr and Finetooth generally have excellent instincts about such things, so now I'm torn. (I love the idea of a featured topic; but I'm not sure how keeping the articles separate promotes that goal, or whether promoting that goal is an appropriate factor in a merge decision.) -Pete (talk) 06:59, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

On further reflection, EncMstr's point is pretty compelling. Okay, I'm fine with developing them separately. -Pete (talk) 07:02, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I removed the "merge" proposal, as it seems the arguments are pretty compelling. However, I think it would be wise to make sure the reason for the separate articles is made clear by the way the lead sections of both articles are phrased. Like, "Fed by the highly-protected Bull Run Watershed, water drawn from the Bull Run River (much of which is open to recreation) is used to keep Portland's thirst quenched" or something along those lines.

Thanks, Pete. I'm planning to work on the lead, which isn't really a summary of the whole article at the moment, and I'll try to work something in about why the articles are separate. I have some discharge data to add to the "Course" section, and I'm not sure where I'll go from there. I really should work on the watershed article as well since it needs attention, and a lot of the research can be expected to overlap. I don't know how much detail I'm going to find about the upper reaches of the river beyond the course description. Somewhere years ago I read an account that attributed a large fraction of the water in the river to fog drip from tree needles. I thought that was wonderful, if true. I'd like a glass of cold fog, please. Finetooth (talk) 01:32, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Here's the one. All the other hits seem to be citing it. —EncMstr (talk) 01:40, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Muchas gracias. Finetooth (talk) 17:18, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Comment: Much of the Bull Run Watershed consists of water supply history; that could be moved to a title History of water use in the Bull Run watershed. Other sections of the watershed article, such as the geography and the exploration sections (as well as a summary of water use) do belong on the main article. Shannon^{talk SIGN!} 01:30, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Shannon, I think you have a good point. I think we can accommodate it with the current article structure, though, with a little reorganizing; it's pretty much what we did with the Columbia River article you mentioned. The Bull Run River article absolutely should have a section on the watershed (as you say, like the Columbia River article does). It doesn't need to have exhaustive detail; so we could handle that by summarizing the Watershed article in a section, and providing a {{main}} template at the top of the section linking to the Watershed article. (Note, the Columbia Basin article needs lots of work, which could easily start by merging content over from Columbia River#Watershed.) -Pete (talk) 02:18, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the river article should include a watershed section and that it could be a summary of the watershed article. I've done a little revising of the watershed article, and in the process I've noted one fairly big kind of confusion. In some of its documents, the Portland Water Bureau uses the word "watershed" to mean the large fraction of the watershed that lies above the intake for the municipal water supply at river mile 6.2. But "watershed" in the traditional sense means the entire watershed and must include the catchment basin of the whole river. Two named tributaries, the Little Sandy River and Laughing Water Creek, enter the Bull Run River below the intake, and their subwatersheds are part of the Bull Run River watershed but not part of the Portland water supply. All of this is further complicated by the Bull Run Management Unit, which extends beyond the watershed boundaries in places and extends somewhat downstream of the municipal water intake. The three areas—watershed, municipal water supply drainage basin, and management unit—are not identical in size or shape. I'm not entirely happy with the revisions I made today to the watershed article because I think my explanation of these three areas is still murky. Also, the basin size of 102 square miles (260 km²) that is given in the river article and the watershed article, even though sourced (to a dead link here and to a water bureau document in the watershed article). is incorrect. That number applies only to the watershed above the intake pipe. I want to fix the numbers, but I have not yet found a reliable source that gives the area of the entire watershed. And you are right, Shannon1, in thinking that the river article needs a geography (and geology) section and that the exploration section has material that could be useful here too (although I think it may wander into unnecessary detail about the founding of Portland). It could be that as we develop the river article, it will latch onto parts of the watershed article and run off with them. One of my concerns about cloning parts of the watershed article here right away is that the watershed article includes a lot of problematic and not well-supported material. It would be great, Shannon, if you could help me clean up the watershed article by finding reliable sources for unsourced claims and trying to re-organize the verifiable material. Finetooth (talk) 02:57, 30 August 2009 (UTC)