Latest news with #GroundwaterQualityProtectionAct
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Environment, social justice groups withdraw support for governor's key groundwater protection bill
Gov. Tina Kotek on May 3, 2023 at the home of Ana Maria Rodriguez, a Boardman resident and Oregon Rural Action organizer, whose well water has nearly four times the safe drinking water limit for nitrate. Kotek was visiting with residents in Boardman, who are concerned that progress on the nitrate pollution in the Lower Umatilla Basin has been slow. (Alex Baumhardt/Oregon Capital Chronicle) Groups that helped champion one of Gov. Tina Kotek's key groundwater protection bills this session are withdrawing their support and asking the Legislature to let it die for now, following a last-minute amendment they say effectively neutralizes the intent of the legislation. Senate Bill 1154 as first proposed in February would provide long overdue updates to the state's Groundwater Quality Protection Act first passed in 1989, giving state agencies more authority to coordinate and to intervene early in Oregon's contaminated groundwater areas. Since 1989, three critical groundwater management areas have been identified in Oregon. They are all still considered to be in critical condition due to nitrate contamination, almost entirely from agricultural fertilizers and animal manure, and none have seen vast improvement in the last two to three decades. Groups heavily involved in addressing water contamination issues in northeast Oregon — including the nonprofits Oregon Rural Action, Center for Food Safety, Food & Water Watch of Oregon, Columbia Riverkeeper, and Friends of Family Farmers — consulted with Kotek's environmental advisers on the bill and offered testimony supporting it in recent months. But in advance of a public hearing and vote on Monday in the Senate Committee on Rules, the groups released a statement saying they could no longer support it. They wrote that a proposed 39-page amendment posted late Friday at the request of state Sen. Kayse Jama, D-Portland and committee chair, 'revealed the extent to which the Governor's office had allowed powerful industrial lobbies to influence the bill late in the session.' Lawmakers have to wrap up voting on all bills by June 29. At a news conference Monday Kotek said she was not aware of the proposed amendment. 'I think the bill is in good shape, and I know some folks would like it to be stronger, but I think it significantly strengthens what we do in the state, and I support the bill in its current state,' she said. Several environmental and social justice groups that have supported the bill continue to do so with the amendment, according to Anca Matica, a Kotek spokesperson. They include the Portland-based nonprofit Verde, Oregon Environmental Council and Beyond Toxics. The amendment strikes earlier provisions in the bill that would have required state agencies to provide regular reports to the Environmental Quality Commission, the governor and the Legislature in order to receive funding to execute their local voluntary implementation plan. It also strikes part of the original bill that would have allowed the state to modify existing permits for wastewater reuse and confined animal feed operations if doing so could curb pollution. One big change the amendment brings to the original bill, according to Kaleb Lay, policy director at Oregon Rural Action, is eliminating the requirement that the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and the Oregon Water Resources Department work together to figure out whether new requests for groundwater permits, or requests for new uses of groundwater, might contribute to pollution. Representatives from the Oregon Farm Bureau and Water for Eastern Oregon, a nonprofit industry group representing northeast Oregon food processors and agricultural industries, said the amendment makes improvements to the bill, specifically ones that require third-party analysis of state hydrogeology and well-testing data. 'The bill has come a long way. And again, the problem is identified,' Oregon Farm Bureau Executive Director Greg Addington told lawmakers on the Senate Rules Committee. 'We want to avoid groundwater contamination. We can all understand that, and we can all get behind it.' Kristin Anderson Ostrom, executive director of Oregon Rural Action, said in the multi-group statement it would be better to abstain from voting on the bill now and to work on it for the next Legislative short session in 2026. 'Governor Kotek showed great initiative in putting this bill forward to learn the lessons of the LUBGWMA (Lower Umatilla Basin Groundwater Management Area) in eastern Oregon, but this legislation doesn't go far enough to put those lessons into practice,' she wrote. 'Polluters continue to get whatever they want, while the communities directly impacted by pollution are denied what they need and have been asking for – to enforce the law and stop the Pollution.' The Lower Umatilla Basin Groundwater Management Area, designated as critically impaired in 1990, has gotten worse under state supervision. A volunteer committee established in 1997 to tackle problems has had little to no impact. Thousands of residents in Morrow and Umatilla counties — mostly Latino and low-income — have been drinking from contaminated wells, which is dangerous because nitrates consumed over long periods can increase risks for cancer and birth defects. In September, Kotek and state agency officials released a comprehensive plan for curbing nitrate pollution in northeast Oregon that 'will take decades' to achieve. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opposition packs hearing on Gov. Kotek proposal to update critical groundwater area protections
Gov. Tina Kotek on May 3, 2023 at the home of Ana Maria Rodriguez, a Boardman resident and Oregon Rural Action organizer, whose well water has nearly four times the safe drinking water limit for nitrate. Kotek was visiting with residents in Boardman, who are concerned that progress on the nitrate pollution in the Lower Umatilla Basin has been slow. (Alex Baumhardt/Oregon Capital Chronicle) Gov. Tina Kotek's proposal to give state agencies more authority to intervene earlier in Oregon's contaminated groundwater areas met massive opposition at its first public hearing. Two rooms and two separate hearings were scheduled Tuesday to accommodate all of the people who went to the Capitol to offer testimony on Senate Bill 1154 during a meeting of the Senate Natural Resources and Wildfire Committee. The bill was sent to the Senate Rules Committee without recommendation, where it will receive another public hearing in the weeks ahead. Bill advocates say it would provide much-needed updates to the state's Groundwater Quality Protection Act first passed in 1989. That act was meant to conserve groundwater resources and prevent contamination following well-testing across the state that showed many contained water with high levels of agricultural chemicals. Chandra Ferrari, Kotek's natural resources adviser, told lawmakers the current law is too vague, lacks a clear process for involving state and local agencies in remediating pollution and doesn't do enough to protect groundwater from pollution before aquifers become critically impaired. About 80% of Oregonians rely on groundwater for some or all of their drinking water, and one-quarter rely on private, at-home wells. About 90% of rural Oregonians rely on those at-home wells, according to Ferrari. 'It's risky, it's costly, it's time-consuming to not effectively address contamination,' Ferrari told lawmakers. 'We need to work harder to not hit these critical contamination thresholds, and we need to work smarter when we do. Our laws should facilitate us doing these things well.' But those opposed to the updates include more than 560 people and groups who submitted testimony in advance of the hearing, as well as several eastern Oregon state representatives, who say the bill would allow state agencies broader authority to do water and soil testing and monitoring on private property without landowner consent and that it could lead to state agencies cutting off water to some. State Reps. Bobby Levy, R-Echo, and Greg Smith, R-Heppner, spoke in opposition to the bill at the hearing . Smith said allowing state agencies to monitor and test private wells, or inspect potentially leaky septic systems, would violate his constituents' property rights. Levy called it an 'unacceptable overreach of state power,' and a 'persecution' of rural Oregonians. 'It grants broad, unchecked authority to state agencies, allows them to walk onto private property, dig up soil, impose arbitrary restrictions and suspend water use that is critical, not only to agriculture, but to basic human life,' she said, before applause erupted in one hearing room. The updated Groundwater Quality Protection Act would establish thresholds for contaminants that automatically qualify them as critical groundwater management areas. It would also create a new designation for 'groundwater areas of concern,' where contaminants are detected but a threshold for declaring the area in critical condition hasn't quite been met. The five governor-appointed members of the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission would designate 'areas of concern' if contamination was growing or particularly threatening, and then the governor would appoint a response team made up of a mix of agency officials who would help local stakeholders create a 'local voluntary implementation plan' for curbing pollution and alerting the public. The groups and agencies would be required to provide regular reports to the Environmental Quality Commission, the governor and the Legislature in order to receive funding to execute their local voluntary implementation plan. If the voluntary plan does not keep a basin from entering critical contamination thresholds, then state agencies could more directly intervene, including testing soil and water on private land for potential septic leaks and requiring some wastewater permit holders to conform to tighter regulations on where and how much nitrate-laden water they can release. The bill also more clearly spells out which agencies are responsible for participating in action on groundwater management areas and what each agency is responsible for doing. The Oregon Health Authority would be in charge of informing the public and helping with testing and providing safe drinking water; the Oregon Water Resources Department would be in charge of regulating water flows and rights; the Oregon Department of Agriculture would take on agricultural polluters and mitigating farm pollution; the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality would take on any changes needed to protect groundwater through industrial water permitting; and other agencies would be involved as needed, according to Ferrari. As the law works now, there isn't one sole agency responsible for groundwater quality protection in Oregon, Ferrari said, and no single agency is responsible for helping communities impacted by contaminated groundwater. Since 1989, three critical groundwater management areas have been identified in Oregon. They are all still considered to be in critical condition due to nitrate contamination, almost entirely from agriculture, and none have seen vast improvement in the last two to three decades. The Lower Umatilla Basin Groundwater Management Area in northeastern Oregon, designated as critically impaired in 1990, has gotten worse under state supervision, and a volunteer committee established in 1997 to tackle problems has had little to no impact. Thousands of residents in Morrow and Umatilla counties — mostly Latino and low-income — have lived and drunk from contaminated wells, which is dangerous because nitrates consumed over long periods can increase risks for cancer and birth defects. In September, Kotek and state agency officials released a comprehensive plan for curbing nitrate pollution in northeast Oregon that 'will take decades' to achieve. More than a dozen residents of Boardman who cannot drink their well water submitted testimony in support of Senate Bill 1154. Kaleb Lay, director of policy research at the nonprofit Oregon Rural Action, said the bill could be improved in the Senate Rules Committee to get broader buy-in, but that updates to the Groundwater Protection Act are long overdue. It wasn't until Morrow County declared a water emergency and Oregon Rural Action began a grassroots well testing campaign that the state became more directly involved. 'If we leave the law unfixed, it will simply stay broken. I would argue that every moment we spend on this bill is worthwhile,' Lay told lawmakers. Ferrari said updates to the Groundwater Quality Protection Act would allow the state to intervene earlier to avoid situations such as that in the Lower Umatilla Basin. 'We know or have reason to believe there are contamination problems in other parts of the state that are not currently GWMAs (groundwater management areas). And also, we are still in the process, 30-plus years later, of undertaking costly and time consuming efforts to address contamination in the GWMAs that have been identified,' she told lawmakers. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
27-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
For Gov. Kotek, natural resources adviser, water tops list of 2025 environmental priorities
An irrigation pivot sits in a crop of canola near Echo. About 85% of all the water diverted from rivers, streams and aquifers in Oregon is used for irrigated agriculture. (Kathy Aney/Oregon Capital Chronicle) Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek and her natural resources adviser Geoff Huntington consider water quality and availability a top priority this legislative session. In separate interviews with the Capital Chronicle, they said they're particularly focused on addressing overdrawn water basins and ongoing issues with groundwater contamination in eastern Oregon and other critical groundwater areas in the state. Kotek also discussed her expectations for wildfire funding strategies, and the growing need for the Legislature to address energy demand and the cost of powering data centers. Kotek said proposed legislation to update some of the state's water management laws is the product of 'a long overdue conversation,' among the governor's office and the state Legislature. 'I'm committed to making progress there,' she said. In less than a century, Oregon water officials have allocated all surface water under their purview, overallocated groundwater in several basins and have no clear accounting of how much water is still available in others. In May, Kotek convened a group of prominent water attorneys in the state to present ideas to the Legislature for improving Oregon's water policies, water rights laws and allocation rules. Huntington said the governor's office will back a package of bills that gives state agencies more statutory authority to manage water allocations and regulations in Oregon. Much of that is being sponsored by Rep. Ken Helm, D-Beaverton, and Rep. Mark Owens, R-Crane, who co-chair the House agriculture and water committee. 'We are currently managing the resource based on a structure from the 1800s and the early 1900s,' Huntington said of the state's ground and surface waters. 'We've been adjusting and tweaking and moving through a process of trying to accommodate and collaborate where we need it, when we need it, but I think we've run out of room.' Kotek and Huntington are eyeing changes to Oregon's Groundwater Quality Protection Act, which is meant to conserve groundwater resources and prevent contamination. Updates to the act could help the Oregon Water Resources Department Department improve its statewide data on water quantity and distribution in the 20 basins they oversee, and help the Department of Environmental Quality exert more authority over sources of pollution in critical groundwater management areas. Huntington said the Lower Umatilla Basin Groundwater Management Area in northeast Oregon – one of three deemed critically impaired by nitrate contamination from farm fertilizers, animal waste and food processors – is an example of one area where the state could do more to improve conditions if agencies had more authority. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality recently released a study showing the problem of groundwater nitrate contamination in Morrow and Umatilla counties is getting worse, OPB reported. Among the entities contributing to the contamination is the Port of Morrow, which was recently allowed in an emergency order from Kotek to violate its wastewater reuse permit and spread more nitrate contaminated water across more farm fields above the contaminated aquifer. Huntington, who spoke to the Capital Chronicle before the emergency order from Kotek, said it was a 'false premise' that the state is prioritizing the port's operations at the expense of safe drinking water for eastern Oregonians. 'I've spent more time in Boardman, personally, than any other part of the state since I've been in the governor's office, working with not just the port, not just the food processing and agricultural folks that are on the front end of the issue, but also with the CBOs (community-based organizations) and the impacted community,' Huntington said. He said he is helping the Port of Morrow with its efforts to secure federal loans that will be used to finish building digesters that are supposed to remove nitrogen from the port's wastewater. There are so far no commensurate loans or grants being pursued by the governor's office to pay for the infrastructure needed to connect homes relying on well water to a municipal water system. Kotek said her budget includes ongoing support to help get residents in need bottled water and water filters in Morrow and Umatilla counties and that she will continue to seek long-term solutions. Kotek, who was forced in December to convene lawmakers for an emergency session to pay outstanding wildfire bills, has been following closely a committee appointed by the Legislature last year to come up with long-term wildfire funding solutions to present in the current session. The group has shared several ideas, including increasing a lodging tax and sending the revenues to the state's wildfire fund, and a one-time investment of the state's $1.8 billion revenue surplus, known as the 'kicker' tax rebate, into a fund where it would earn at least 5% interest per year. Kotek said she expects the group to present its best ideas for wildfire funding to the Legislature in the coming weeks. 'They have to be politically viable in that we can get them across the finish line,' she said. None of the proposals include new funding from private investor-owned electric utilities, responsible for some of the most expensive wildfires in Oregon history. Lobbyists from those same companies have sought some protections from future wildfire liabilities in conversations with lawmakers in recent months. PacifiCorp, owner of Pacific Power – found responsible for the 2020 Labor Day fires in Oregon that killed nine people and destroyed 5,000 homes and structures – was denied liability caps for its subsidiary, Rocky Mountain Power, by the Idaho Public Utilities Commission earlier this year. PacifiCorp sought to limit future wildfire damages in Idaho to only actual damages, not punitive or other damages, such as damages for pain and suffering. Kotek did not say whether PacifiCorp or other utilities were seeking the same limits in Oregon, but she expressed concern that if the state doesn't limit wildfire liability for the utilities – both cooperatives and private-investor owned – they could continue to increase rates to cover future disaster losses. 'We have to hold our big investor-owned utilities accountable for safety, for compensating folks, but also being part of the solution, to make sure that they will help us avoid major incidents in the future and not put all of the burden on ratepayers,' she said. PacifiCorp is still embroiled in lawsuits over the Labor Day fires and has been ordered to pay or agreed to pay hundreds of million dollars to victims. But the cases are not over, and thousands of survivors are awaiting settlements. Kotek said she would not withhold signing into law bills that could grant some relief from strict wildfire liability to companies like PacifiCorp until survivors are paid. 'I am not a fan of linking the two,' she said. 'They must compensate survivors, and we need to have a very important conversation about how we manage risk and liability in our utility system.' Kotek said she and lawmakers this session are calling for more transparency from the Public Utilities Commission on ratemaking and recent electricity rate hikes that have led to residential customers shelling out 50% more for electricity today than five years ago. Data centers are behind the largest and fastest increases in demand, requiring many electric utilities to buy more, and more expensive energy and expand infrastructure to serve the data centers. Senate Bill 553, sponsored by Sen. Janeen Sollman, D-Hillsboro, would require the Oregon Department of Energy to study data centers and propose policies to protect Oregonians from steep rate hikes. Hillsboro has approved and sited a large number of data centers, which now demand as much electricity as nearly every residential customer in all of Washington County combined, according to an analysis from the watchdog Citizens' Utility Board. 'I think that we're at a point in Oregon where we have to have a conversation about what kind of criteria we should have for local economic development as it relates to data centers,' Kotek said. 'The impact of the growth of data centers is at such a point where you have impacts on regional water supply, load on the grid and all these other things that are really, really important. So I think we have to wrestle as a state — both legislators and in the executive branch – with what kind of criteria we should have going forward.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
