In this episode of Beat Check with The Oregonian, environmental reporter Gosia Wozniacka talks to the executive director of Willamette Riverkeeper Travis Williams.

His Oregon City-based nonprofit, which aims to protect and restore the river, had spent the past two decades cleaning up trash up and down the watershed. But since the onset of the pandemic in 2020, the organization had watched massive and unprecedented amounts of garbage accumulate in and along the river as a rising number of people experiencing homelessness set up tents, shacks and makeshift cabins along the shore. 

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