Lane County Commissioners have taken the first step in dissolving a water control district that maintained erosion control along a portion of the Willamette River, voting Tuesday to begin the process unanimously in its consent calendar.
The River Road Water Control District manages seven erosion prevention structures known as revetments along the west side of the Willamette between Eugene and Harrisburg.
It hasn’t filed audit reports in four years, triggering the Oregon Secretary of State to ask commissioners to dissolve it.
“[The district] has been in existence since the 1960s,” said Caleb Crumrine, the district’s most recent president, speaking to commissioners at Tuesday’s meeting. “Before, [past boards] would just vote to dump rock at every revetment that the [U.S. Army] Corps of Engineers told them was failing or needed rock.”
Crumrine said the Corps stopped doing the inspections in 2007, expecting the district to do it instead.
“We’re all volunteers. We don’t have the boat to do it. We don’t even know what we’re looking at,” he said. “And there’s also many agencies that don’t want you to put rock in the river any more, so the permit process alone would take all of our money.”
A statement from the Portland office of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers contradicted that, in part.
“The Corps periodically inspects revetments in the Willamette River Bank Protection program. These particular revetments were last inspected in 2024,” the statement said, in part.
Members of the River Road Water Control District Board effectively disbanded it after years of being unable to complete revetment work rather than tax those in the district.
The Corps said it was aware that the district is no longer maintaining the revetments, but it “is no longer responsible for the revetments or their maintenance/repairs.”
Crumrine said the board has $117,000 in the bank.
“If you close us, nothing will change, and that’s fine,” he said. “But this is something that you guys will deal with eventually. The river will cut through revetments. It will cut off many citizens from River Road. It could even cut River Road off."
County staff will now examine the district’s financial records.
Once a financial report is completed, a public meeting will be held within 21-30 days.
