Oregon Water Stories

A linguistic look at a precious resource

Vision

Water infrastructure of the State of Oregon currently relies on snow melt as the main source of water. However, due to climate change, by the year 2080, the main water source will be rain.
This raises questions for policy makers, such as:

• What should the people of Oregon do to be ready for this change?
• How do various groups of people (e.g., farmers, tribes, industries, environmental groups, cities, rural communities) throughout the state relate to water?
• How can the state make equitable and effective changes to current infrastructure to be ready for 2080?

This project aims to help answer some of those questions through interdisciplinary collaboration.

Doers

Professors Melissa Haeffner and Janet Cowal teamed up with Willamette Partnerships and The Nature Conservancy to study how Oregonians talk and think about water and equity.

Process

Melissa Haeffner, her Freshman Inquiry class, and her Environmental Science and Management students created the website oregonwaterstories.com to capture perspectives and concerns Oregonians have about water access.

Janet Cowal’s Applied Linguistics students used these stories to create “Q-statements.” These are messages that embody the different themes and perspectives found in the responses.

These Q-statements will be used in focus groups in the 5 water district regions of the state. The researchers are intentionally ensuring that non-dominant voices are present in these sessions.

In addition, Applied Linguistics students are doing corpus linguistics analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis of the stories to find patterns and themes in the ways different groups of Oregonians throughout the state talk and think about water.

Our combined findings are being used in policy papers for Oregon’s water policy decision makers.

Lessons Learned

This project is ongoing. See References and Recommended Reading (below) for results which have been published.
Check back for updates.

Inspiration Behind it all

This research expands on Melissa Haeffner and Janet Cowal’s work from 2019 on agency and water justice through a critical linguistics lens.

References and Recommended Reading

Cowal, J., Haeffner, M. & Walker, B. (forthcoming) The Pedagogy of Oregon Water Values: Infusing water justice and activist applied linguistics in service of equity. In D. Ortactepe Hart, J. Ennser-Kananen, & R. Borde (Eds.).  Intersections of environmental and language justice: exploring policy, pedagogy and activism. Edinburgh University Press.

Haeffner, M., Cantor, A., Cowal, J., Bryant, A.*, Palacios, K.*, Serna, D., Sprauer, B*. Tran-Gruver, A.*, Yaw Jones, D. (2025). Plural Water Narratives: An Environmental Justice Lens on a Systematic Review of Q- Methodology Water Research. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water, 2025; 12:e70024 https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.70024 *PSU students

Haeffner, M., Cowal, J., Walker, B. and McClellan, C. (2024). When overextended surface allocation turns to groundwater: a Q methodology of well users in Oregon’s high desert. Frontiers Environmental Science 12:1398439. doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2024.1398439

Haeffner, M., & Cowal, J. (2019). A case study of OregonWaterStories.com: Exploring agency with water justice, activist applied linguistics, and a community partner. Case Studies in the Environment, 3. https://doi.org/10.1525/cse.2018.001685