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Decades-old groundwater pollution issue in eastern Oregon earns new commitment from state agencies

Residential wells supporting hundreds of eastern Oregon households are unusable due to unsafe nitrate levels in the water, the result of agricultural practices.

PORTLAND, Ore. — Oregon officials rolled out a document Friday laying out their plans for the Lower Umatilla Basin, a region suffering from groundwater that's been heavily contaminated with nitrates, rendering residential wells unsafe to use.

The state of Oregon discovered 34 years ago that a massive aquifer, covering 562 square miles in parts of Morrow and Umatilla counties near the town of Boardman, was contaminated with nitrates. The chemical is considered harmful for people above certain limits set by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, particularly to infants and pregnant people.

Hundreds of residential wells in the region have since tested for nitrate levels above those EPA limits, and thousands of household rely on well water in this mostly rural area — about 4,500.

READ MORE: New maps pinpoint contaminated wells in Oregon's northern Umatilla and Morrow counties

While there's no one culprit, the nitrates have been definitively linked to food production in the region: things like fertilizer spread on farm fields and the waste from large animal feeding operations. The nitrates leach down through the soil and into groundwater, contaminating the aquifer.

To the state, the impacted area is known as the Lower Umatilla Basin Groundwater Management Area, or LUBGWMA.

For decades, Oregon has relied largely on voluntary actions to stop the contamination. That has not worked, and contamination has only gotten worse. But over the last year-and-a-half, growing pressure from local communities has prompted state agencies to take a look at what they're doing and pledge to do more.

Simply put, the state has been loath to crack down on the use of nitrates out of fear that it will squash the food production industries that the area relies upon for jobs and economic growth, and business interests have likewise been banging that drum for years. On the other side of the issue are families with no access to clean water unless the state delivers it to them.

READ MORE: Oregon regulators have had decades to tackle the Umatilla Basin's water pollution, but it's only gotten worse

Oregon's nitrate reduction plan

But on Friday, state officials released a hefty document outlining a new plan. In it, four state agencies pledged to work together on the issue: the Oregon Department of Agriculture, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, the Oregon Water Resources Department and the Oregon Health Authority.

The biggest change appears to come from ODA, which is tasked with developing new compliance benchmarks for irrigation. A framework under consideration would establish specific thresholds for soil nitrate levels, requiring recordkeeping for nitrate and irrigation applications and conducting post-harvest soil nitrate testing.

State officials estimate that 70% of the nitrate problem stems from agriculture, although it's difficult to discern what share stems from farming practices 50 years ago and what could be from recent weeks and months.

Currently, most farms in the region do not have to keep or share and records documenting how much fertilizer they use, when they use it or where they use it. Requiring that would be a first step toward figuring out if too much is being used and how much it is contributing to the existing issue.

ODA also plans to tighten up existing rules involving large feed lots, known as CAFOs, which contribute immense amounts of animal waste that is then spread onto fields as fertilizer. They plan to study that problem further as well.

Meanwhile, the DEQ will update and modernize wastewater permits in the region to minimize nitrate leaching into the aquifer. The agency will also partner with Umatilla County to regulate septic systems in the area. They'll study a group of 30 wells in the area, taking readings four times a year to better gauge how nitrate levels change over time.

The OWRD has been charged with inspecting wells to ensure they are built correctly and work with counties to study whether some well owners could be connected to existing city water supplies which are free of nitrates. They also intend to make a new model of the aquifer using recent data, and continue to collect water samples through their well monitoring system.

For OHA, it's a matter of maintaining. They'll be conducting free tests of well water in the region, deliver clean water for free to households with dangerous levels of nitrates, and continue to share information about the dangers of nitrates in drinking water. They'll also be involved in finding ways to create public water systems for impacted properties.

Mixed reactions

One of the biggest champions for people with contaminated wells in the region is a former county commissioner named Jim Doherty. He's also a farmer and rancher.

While Doherty was Morrow County chair, he declared an emergency for the groundwater pollution — the first of its kind in state history. It caused an uproar, and Doherty was soon tossed out of office with a recall vote. He ran for state senate this year, but came up short in the Republican primary.

READ MORE: Bottled water forever? Morrow and Umatilla residents want to see more action to solve groundwater pollution

Doherty told The Story's Pat Dooris that the state's new plan is better late than never, but he sees farmers still being protected, despite representing the lion's share of the problem.

"Some of the suggested self-reporting and things will be initiated in 2026, after extensive landowner and farmer and agricultural input through the year of 2025," Doherty said. "So as a subset of this, they're going to allow those folks to come in and weigh in before anything comes their way. Conversely, that didn't happen for the general public."

Others disagree, thinking this plan is precisely what the doctor ordered. Among them is Justin Green, former DEQ statewide water quality administrator for Oregon. He's now executive director of Water for Eastern Oregon, a group made up of farmers and businesses operating in or around LUBGWMA.

"Going into the basin, inventorying agricultural operations, working with farmers directly to learn more about their nutrient management and farming practices is going to be really important, both for farmers to learn more about their operations but also ODA to learn what technology farmers are using," Green said. "As the plan recognized, irrigation and farming technology has really evolved exponentially in the last 20 years. And we're excited to show off that evolution in the technology that's used in modern farming operations."

Oregon Rural Action, an advocacy group representing people with contaminated wells, is more inclined to agree with Doherty, however. Their director of policy and research, Kaleb Lay, thinks the state's plan represents a list of things Oregon is already doing and will continue to do — nothing transformative. He's particularly unimpressed with ODA's language about a "framework being considered" for farmers to self-report fertilizer use.

"You'd think that would be a no-brainer, right? 70% of the nitrate in the groundwater is coming from fertilizer use by the irrigated ag sector. In all the time we've been working on this as a state, we've never required that," Lay said. "Maybe it's just me, but a plan for dealing with that would look like, 'This is what we are going to do. This is how we are going to regulate this problem,' and then the steps and the timeline for getting there — rather than this vague allusion to something they might do."

Earlier this month, DEQ floated a separate plan for the Port of Morrow, another source of nitrates in the region, to a similar response from stakeholders. The port signaled that the plan represents their investment in addressing the problem, while community advocates like Lay found themselves underwhelmed, to say the least.

Clearly, there's going to continue to be disagreement on how the state should address the issue of nitrate contamination. Regardless, the plan released Friday may be the most significant action taken in over three decades, and at least demonstrates some enhanced attention and coordination from the state.

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