Metro’s Blue Lake Regional Park provides a beautiful setting for families to swim, paddle and splash, and this weekend the park will host the Amica Mid-Summer Triathlon and Duathlon. Visitors are invited to watch athletes participating in the two-day event, July 31 and August 1, which features an All Women's Triathlon/Duathlon, Kid's Splash Pedal-n-Dash, a sports and fitness expo, music, food, prizes, and most of all fun. Blue Lake is a 64-acre natural lake fed by underground springs. The lake’s water is tested twice a week to ensure good quality, and tests this week indicate the water continues to be safe for swimmers. Children under 5 years of age are not allowed in the lake to help keep the water clean, but there is a spray ground for all ages with colorful features that shower, gush, dump and pour water. Visitors can also rent a paddle boat, row boat or canoe to explore Blue Lake.

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Come stretch your legs with Metro's Walk There! on Sunday, August 1 and experience the old and new that exist side by side in Hillsboro's Orenco area. The two-hour walk will be led by local author and the editor of the Walk There! book, Laura Foster. Foster will take walkers through time, exploring two planned, walkable communities - the town of Orenco that was formed by the Oregon Nursery Company in 1906 and the Orenco Station area, named the West Coast's best new suburb in 2006 by Sunset magazine. She'll share insight into both neighborhoods and highlight the nature and green space incorporated into the area. The walk is free and will cover approximately four miles along relatively flat terrain.

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Read recent news coverage of Metro and related topics in local and national media. Link to online stories from newspapers, radio, television and blogs.

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The Metro regional government today released the findings of its forecast of the population and employment growth that would result from building a proposed $3.6 billion Columbia River Crossing project, if tolls are used to finance and manage the facility and light rail is part of it. The agency finds that the proposal would have negligible impact on population and employment growth in Clark County, when comparing the projected growth that would occur with the project with the projected growth that would occur even with no change to the existing bridge. The project's most significant land use effect would be to boost North Portland employment by about 1.5 percent, making that area slightly more competitive than East Multnomah County.

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