The Freshwater Trust

The Freshwater Trust, doing business as Oregon Trout, is a tax-exempt nonprofit based in Portland, Oregon, that receives federal grant funding as a prime recipient for watershed restoration, habitat conservation, mercury monitoring, and irrigation modernization projects across western river basins. The organization does not hold federal contracts or IDVs; its federal footprint consists entirely of cooperative agreements and project grants from natural resource and environmental agencies, with 83% of recent awards as prime recipient and 17% as sub-recipient on grants administered by state watershed boards and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

The Freshwater Trust's customer base is dominated by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Reclamation (10 awards), the Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (8 awards), and smaller award counts from the Department of Agriculture's Forest Service and Natural Resources Conservation Service (3 awards each) and the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management (3 awards), accounting for 66% of recent awards. These five agencies structure nearly all active work; the remaining 34% splits across the EPA, USDA Office of Environmental Markets, and other resource management agencies. Recent representative grants include a $968,072 EPA Region 10 project grant awarded November 15, 2024 (ultimate completion November 14, 2028) to expand watershed-level mercury monitoring in the Willamette River Basin and engage community scientists in dragonfly-based mercury risk modeling across four Columbia River tributary watersheds, with Oregon State University and the U.S. Geological Survey as sub-recipients; a $569,047 NRCS Regional Conservation Partnership Program (CFDA 10.932) cooperative agreement awarded August 21, 2023 (ultimate completion June 15, 2028) for basin analytics supporting strategic conservation investments in Oregon, including irrigation system upgrades and methylmercury reduction tracking in the Snake River Basin; and a $1.1 million Bureau of Reclamation cooperative agreement awarded March 1, 2022 (ultimate completion September 30, 2027) for instream habitat and riparian zone monitoring and stewardship on Rogue River habitat restoration projects. TFT also administers a $199,988 NRCS cooperative agreement (September 1, 2024 to September 30, 2029) to develop an inventory of high-ranking, climate-smart eligible irrigation upgrade projects. In its sub-recipient role, TFT has received seven grant sub-awards from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and other primes, including work on Upper Sandy River Basin habitat restoration, Santiam River infrastructure protection, and Cosumnes River Watershed Outcomes Bank pilots.

Activity has grown from one award annually in 2021–2022 to six awards in 2024, with only one award reaching completion within the next twenty-four months, indicating a stable pipeline. The Freshwater Trust's capability portfolio centers on riparian and instream habitat restoration, mercury and water-quality monitoring using community science and predictive modeling, irrigation infrastructure modernization to reduce environmental runoff, watershed resilience analytics, and outcomes-based conservation project prioritization and tracking across western basins including the Columbia River, Snake River, Rogue River, Sandy River, Cosumnes River, and Rio Grande Valley systems.