Oregon agriculture companies offer help with Lower Umatilla Basin nitrate pollution, but skeptics remain

An ongoing groundwater crisis in the Lower Umatilla Basin has long been linked to the local agricultural industry. Well into the third decade of this crisis, the industry says it should be part of the solution.

For years, the groundwater under much of Umatilla and Morrow counties has been tainted by nitrates, a chemical that has been linked to cancer and other serious illnesses. Studies have long pointed to the agriculture industry as the top contributor to the problem.

Several of the area’s top farms and agricultural processors formed a nonprofit last year called Water for Eastern Oregon, with the stated goal of ensuring access to clean drinking water in the basin. The people behind Water for Eastern Oregon say their concern is genuine and they are committed to a long-term solution that would be “science-based.”

But as the industry reintroduces itself under a new banner, some environmental groups worry that their interest in cleaning up the basin doesn’t get past the topsoil.

From coalition to organization

The origins of Water for Eastern Oregon are tied to a Morrow County nitrates emergency declaration in June 2022.

In the months after that declaration, state agencies would provide funding for clean drinking water deliveries, well testing and filtration systems. But in the early days of the emergency, Debbie Radie said she helped organize an informal coalition of businesses to fill a gap.

“Early on, we kind of stepped in where there would need to be some organization and manpower,” she said. “Morrow County Health just did not have the resources to all of a sudden have this emergency, and then the people that it would need to do the testing.”

Radie is the chief operating officer for Port of Morrow onion processor Boardman Foods and a board member on Water for Eastern Oregon. She said the informal group decided to become an official organization out of a neighborly concern for their community.

“What we found was that there was a lack of education for the entire community,” she said. “These are communities that our employees work at. These are communities that we live at. I have a well. Many of my friends and family have wells.”

Water for Eastern Oregon’s active supporters are some of the biggest names in the region’s agricultural industry: Tillamook Creamery, Boardman Foods, Threemile Canyon Farms, Beef Northwest, Lamb Weston and AgriNorthwest. Together, these companies employ hundreds of people and have helped drive significant growth in Umatilla and Morrow counties while the rest of Eastern Oregon has remained relatively flat.

Michael Graham, the senior director of operations at Tillamook’s Boardman site and the chair of Water for Eastern Oregon, said one of the group’s biggest short-term goals is education, providing informational material on topics like how to interpret a well test and what to do next after a well tests positive for nitrates.

Water for Eastern Oregon is also interested in a long-term solution to nitrate pollution, the group’s leaders said, but is lighter on specifics.

“There’s a lot of moving parts to it,” Graham said. “The hydrology is very complex. And so finding a long term solution, we feel it’s really important to have the right information and data so that the solutions that we do pursue are the right ones.”

Water for Eastern Oregon, which also goes by the name H2OEO, was incorporated as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit last year, meaning that the group can take part in political activities. Both Graham and Radie said Water for Eastern Oregon has no interest in political lobbying but is instead focusing on finding a “science-based” solution to the problem.

In a follow-up statement, Water for Eastern Oregon spokesman Daniel Wattenburger explained why it chose to incorporate as a 501(c)(4).

“We decided a 501(c)(4) fit our needs because it makes us accountable to our members to decide collectively how to use our resources through a board structure,” he said. “Member dues are not tax deductible and must be focused on our goals of meeting immediate needs and supporting long-term solutions.”

The group is putting its faith in the Lower Umatilla Basin Groundwater Management Area Committee to help find that solution. Founded more than 30 years ago, the committee is tasked with developing voluntary measures to decrease nitrate levels in the basin. Radie sits on the committee as an alternate representing industry and business. Despite that committee’s many compositions and efforts over the years, nitrate pollution in the region has only risen.

Water for Eastern Oregon will also be relying on the advice of environmental consultant Justin Green. A former administrator with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, Radie said Green’s connections made him a good hire for Water for Eastern Oregon.

“I believe that having him (as) a part of what we’re doing gives us another avenue of finding the right person to talk to. He also has connections with our legislators,” she said.

When pressed on the group’s political lobbying interests, Radie added that the businesses are “not particularly interested in changing legislation or regulation” but hopes Green’s understanding of Salem will be helpful in reaching long-term solutions.

The playbook

Green personally signed off on the most recent plan to clean up the basin.

The LUBGWMA Committee published the Second Action Plan in 2020. It was meant to update a set of voluntary recommendations designed to reduce nitrate levels in the basin’s groundwater supply. In a 2020 letter to the committee, Green called it a “positive step forward.”

The plan’s recommendations included having the committee develop nitrate data models, create its own training and certification program to protect drinking water, and look at the feasibility of nitrate remediation.

Years after he left state government, Green still believes the plan can work.

Green worked as a lawyer in several states before he got into environmental regulation, first at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and then at Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. From 2018 to 2021, Green was DEQ’s water quality administrator, a position that required him to approve the second action plan and stay in communication with the committee.

Green pursued private environmental consulting after leaving the department, and he hooked up with Water for Eastern Oregon through his work with the Northeast Oregon Water Association, a group that’s worked to connect Umatilla Basin irrigators with water from the Columbia River.

Going from a regulator to an advisor to the agricultural industry, Green said his job with Water for Eastern Oregon entails reviewing state policies and promoting the voluntary solutions that are already on the books.

“My work with H2OEO is to help them understand the different conversations that are happening regarding water quality,” he said. “And if projects are being proposed, what the implications and possibilities of that project are. H2OEO, they are not the scientists themselves pushing projects, but they want to be there to support science-based projects that will lead to a positive result.”

According to Green, many of the solutions for the basin’s groundwater problem aren’t new and could already be found in the state’s Second Action Plan.

The committee estimated that 70% of the basin’s nitrates came from irrigated agriculture, farmers who used wastewater and fertilizer to cultivate crops like onions and potatoes. The second action plan recommended the committee create a list of best management practices complemented by a voluntary certification program for farmers who adopted these practices.

More than three years after the plan was adopted, it’s unclear if the committee has implemented these recommendations. And nitrate levels are continuing to rise rather than fall.

Still, Green argued that the second action plan can be effective if the state gives the committee the resources to execute it.

“The second action plan provides the playbook,” he said. “Now we need to run those plays, and implement those projects and measure the results.”

Green said nitrate pollution isn’t an issue specific to Eastern Oregon. Nitrate contamination has become a major problem in other states like California, Nebraska and Minnesota. Elsewhere in Oregon, The Bulletin recently highlighted creeping nitrate concerns in Deschutes County.

The law gives state agencies like DEQ and the Oregon Department of Agriculture the power to take a more aggressive approach to regulation in the Umatilla Basin. Should voluntary measures fail to move the needle, the state could issue mandates.

That’s not a path Green wants to see the basin go down.

“Incentive-based projects tend to be more successful because once you start regulating, people tend to go into their corners,” he said. “If you’re creating incentives and bringing people to the table to collaborate, you’re gonna get a better response.”

It’s exactly that approach that some environmental groups find critically flawed. Without tougher regulations, they said, the water will remain undrinkable.

‘We have no faith’

By the time the groundwater committee released the Second Action Plan, environmental groups had already called it a failure.

In 2020, several of these groups petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to take emergency action to prevent further nitrate pollution in the basin.

“Every methodology employed by Oregon officials confirms that not only have past voluntary measures relied on by the State been unsuccessful at reducing nitrate concentrations in crucial drinking water sources to below federal and state standards, but also that the unambiguous and unabated trend is towards ever greater levels of nitrate contamination,” the petition states.

The EPA didn’t directly intervene at the time, but many of these same groups formed an alliance called the Stand Up to Factory Farms Coalition to oppose the second action plan. In a May 2020 letter, the coalition urged the state to move away from plans based on voluntary actions and instead adopt mandatory rules. The state could then take it a step further by placing a moratorium on all new dairies and feedlots, the groups recommended.

Tyler Lobdell, a staff attorney for environmental group Food & Water Watch, helped write both the EPA petition and the letter to the committee.

Lobdell said the problem with the second action plan, and the local committee’s overall approach to the basin since its start, has been its steadfast commitment to voluntary actions. The agricultural industry does not have a track record of reforming itself, he added.

“This problem doesn’t get better, it only gets worse until the underlying management practices change and until less nitrogen is disposed of in the environment,” he said. “We have no faith, no expectation that those sorts of reforms are coming until they are required.”

In their communications to government regulators, the environmental coalition took special aim at confined animal feeding operations, livestock farms with more than 1,000 animals.

While studies have found that irrigated agriculture is the most significant contributor to nitrate pollution, Lobdell said these operations are connected to other major sources of contamination. Lobdell said a dairy processor like Tillamook creates the need for larger dairies, which in turn requires farmers to grow crops to feed the animals. Each step of the supply chain has the opportunity to introduce more nitrates into the groundwater system, he said.

Lobdell dismissed Water for Eastern Oregon as a “greenwashing campaign,” an attempt by the local agriculture industry to make itself look more environmentally friendly.

“To the extent that H2OEO wants to do good, I say that’s excellent,” he said. “But I would like to see the money that they’re spending on fancy websites and marketing campaigns spent on reforming their practices so that we can actually get a handle on this problem.”

Lobdell also isn’t convinced that Water for Eastern Oregon will forego political lobbying. He expects the group to fight “tooth and nail” against any nitrate mandates that might affect the industry.

“It’s part of what folks like me call ‘agricultural exceptionalism,’” he said. “We don’t accept this level of public health risk without taking meaningful action in other realms. This industry gets special treatment, and they’ve gotten so used to that special treatment, that it’s anathema to them that they would ever be told what to do.”

In response to Lobdell’s criticism, Wattenburger echoed Radie’s comments about Water for Eastern Oregon’s place in the community.

“Our members want to be part of a lasting solution for our Morrow and Umatilla county communities,” he said. “Our lives and livelihoods are here. We created this organization because we believe this is a complex task, but that we can accomplish more by working together than we can as individuals.”

Editor’s note: The story has been updated to include additional comments from Water for Eastern Oregon spokesman Daniel Wattenburger.