Tillamook County's drought breaks, but old river impairments remain

A year makes a striking difference along the Coastal Lowlands of Tillamook County. In the first week of August 2025, the entire watershed here was rated abnormally dry or worse, with nearly all of it deep in severe drought. This same week in 2026, none of the county sits in moderate, severe, extreme, or exceptional drought, and only about a third remains even at the mildest abnormally dry tier. That share has held steady for seven weeks running after climbing through June, which reads less like a temporary reprieve than a settled recovery.

On the Wilson, Trask, and Nestucca Rivers, gauges are reading at the low end of their past 90-day range for both water level and flow, with water temperatures around 20°C. Taken alone, that looks like stress. But for a county no longer under drought designation, this is simply the ordinary late-summer ebb these coastal rivers go through every year, as the pulse of snowmelt and spring rain fades into the dry months before autumn storms return.

The recovery doesn't erase the older water quality picture, though. The Trask and Wilson are still listed as impaired under the Clean Water Act, a designation that predates this year's rainfall and hasn't shifted with it. Compliance among the county's permitted dischargers, mostly dairy operations, remains low-level: a handful of facilities carry recent violations and modest penalties, none serious enough to be flagged for significant non-compliance. The drought is easing considerably across this stretch of the Coast Range, but the questions about what's still moving through these rivers haven't gone anywhere.