It’s been another unbelievable year for us at Surfrider in Oregon and we have you, our dedicated local chapters, members, and volunteers to thank for some huge wins for our ocean, waves, and beaches. We pushed major ocean conservation investments in Oregon’s Marine Reserves over the finish line during Oregon’s short legislative session, we’re razor close with public access at Lighthouse Beach, we launched our Oregon Beaches Forever campaignand secured multiple victories for our coasts and recreational users, and launched new projects to tackle plastic pollution at its source.
Read highlights below on each of our key initiatives and the successes from this year that our Oregon Surfrider network made a reality, and check out our top stories and full year in review on our website.
We’ve seen huge growth in our plastic pollution initiative this year, in programs, policy, and people! After over 4 years of advocacy to get Oregon's health and food code on track to curb single use plastics and build space for reuse, restaurants in Oregon are able to accept reusable containers for to-go and take out. Joining our team this year through a collaborative fellowship with Oregon Sea Grant is Dr. Sarah Wolf, our new Aquaculture Marine Debris Policy Fellow. Over the next year, Sarah will be working with Oregon aquaculture industry professionals, policymakers, engineers, volunteers, and scientists to tackle a critical issue in Yaquina Bay: marine debris from oyster aquaculture facilities.
In September, Surfrider expanded our successful Ocean Friendly Program, launching the new Ocean Friendly Hotels program aimed at expanding our network of businesses that are turning the tide on plastic pollution. Oregon is leading the way with the inclusion of two north coast hotels in the program’s launch. Oregon chapters have been busy keeping our beaches clean this year, hosting 55 cleanups coastwide, engaging 1,174 volunteers and removing nearly 7,000 lbs of trash! A highlight of our cleanup program was the expansion of our July 5th cleanups in Lincoln County, where we hosted 13 cleanups over the holiday weekend and placed extra trash receptacles at beach access points, preventing and removing a total of 1,550 lbs of trash.
Huge gains this year in our ocean protection initiative with a legislative win for Oregon’s Marine Reserves and Protected Areas, a longtime campaign effort for Surfrider for well over a decade. The legislation furthers funding of conservation, research and monitoring these special places particularly related to climate adaptation, tribal engagement, and other community and ecological needs. With amazing partners we helped launch the Oregon Ocean Alliance, a powerful coalition to advance ocean conservation and policy needs at the state level. And keeping us on our heels has been the up and down process for Offshore Wind in Oregon. The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) threw at us a myriad of comment periods this year for a now uncertain future of renewable ocean energy development off Oregon’s coast.
This year Surfrider made significant strides in Oregon advancing new campaigns and local victories within our coast and climate initiative. Oregon’s public beaches, caught in a coastal squeeze of sea level rise and coastal development, are shrinking. This year we launched the statewide Oregon Beaches Forever Campaign with partners Oregon Shores in an effort to begin comprehensively addressing the long term preservation of Oregon’s beaches. At the local level we’ve made progress fighting several bad rip rap proposals which further undermine our beaches and through projects like Ecola Creek preservation, we’ve helped further designs and innovative partnerships for nature based solutions on our beaches.
After years of advocacy from local volunteers and countless hours from our legal team, we’re razor close to securing public access at Lighthouse Beach. This huge win wouldn’t be possible without the hard work and dedication of our volunteers and members in Coos Bay. Soon, this trail will be open to the public, and will remain in the public domain, ensuring access to this special place forever.
We’ve made big strides on our Clean Water Initiative in Oregon this year. Thanks to funding and coordination provided by the Redfish Rocks Community Team, we were able to reopen the Blue Water Task Force Lab in Port Orford, where volunteers tested 65 samples collected at 10 beaches this year. The Newport Chapter has worked closely with the City of Newport to identify several system leaks, leading to repair, and further contributing to clean waters on the central coast. Coastwide, our Blue Water Task Force volunteers collected and processed 495 samples from important beaches and creek mouths, representing approximately 1,000 hours of volunteer effort!
Over the coming weeks we'll be officially updating our Policy and Legislation Page for the 2025 legislative session and statewide policy work, but in the meantime for all you ocean and coastal policy junkies out there, here's a little forecast for next year's work in our 2025 Ocean Policy Shop Update - Across all initiatives we expect it to be a busy year!
