A major goal of the Willamette Partnership is to develop a marketplace that accommodates transactions that address the full spectrum of ecological functions and values present in the Willamette River Basin. Some programs that deliver pieces of this greater whole already exist, such as wetland mitigation and endangered species conservation banking. When fully developed, the Marketplace will build on these pieces and accommodate multi-party transactions that attract enough investment to support projects at a scale that will make an ecological difference.

Currently, in response to the urgency of compliance with new temperature standards and significant investment by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Partnership is moving quickly to facilitate transactions that reduce water temperature in the Willamette River and its tributaries. This effort is described in more detail below.

The Willamette River naturally runs cold. Essential human activities warm it. Rising river temperatures negatively affect native species that reside in and visit the river. To protect these species, the river’s temperature must be lowered. A public agency, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, responded to this problem by designing regulations that require those responsible for warming the river to mitigate their activities—lessoning or eliminate their impact on water temperature. Called a Temperature TMDL (Total Maximum Daily Load), the regulation requires reductions until water quality standards are met. Traditionally, mitigation methods designed to cool water and meet the TMDL standards might include expensive concrete and steel infrastructure. Such solutions achieve the desired end of cooler water, but do little else to improve the environment. Though, there are other approaches to cooling water that produce much broader ecological benefits.

Natural infrastructure, like vegetation or gravel channels, cools river water as well (or at least prevents it from warming). Such infrastructure also has the added benefit of producing a wide variety of other ecological benefits like additional habitat, erosion control, and water filtration. Those increasing temperature, generally don’t have the ability to "build" or acquire such infrastructure to meet mitigate requirements. Conversely, many landowners who could "build" such natural resources have little financial incentive to do so. However, if those increasing temperature could pay those with the capacity to reduce temperature naturally, and these payments could be strategically targeted, than both compliance and significant ecological restoration might occur simultaneously.

Here are examples of how conservation credit trades can work cost-effectively to cool water temperatures:

• Water treatment facilities and factories in the Willamette River Basin face a requirement to install expensive equipment that uses lots of electricity in order to cool their discharges. Using the Willamette Ecosystem marketplace, operators of these plants can invest in conservation credits that could pay for planting trees along riverbanks and restoring floodplains that clean and cool water naturally.
• Developers, transportation agencies and businesses are required to mitigate damage they cause to sensitive areas such as wetlands. Putting those dollars into conservation credits could allow strategic investments in high-priority wetland restoration that is valuable for fish and wildlife habitat, absorbing flood waters and filtering runoff from farms and streets.