He served three years before stepping down July 11 to take a full-time teaching job at OSU in Corvallis. “I think it can continue to be a platform to help drive progress,” said Scott Lukas, former chair of the committee. The findings were sober: In more than half of the wells that had been tested since the early 1990s, the nitrate levels had gone up. In 2020, the committee issued an updated plan of action for the first time since 1997. But dozens of members, leaders, meetings and years later, reports showed voluntary reforms did not work. It evaluated the progress every four years. “If after a scheduled evaluation point DEQ determines that the voluntary approach is not effective, then mandatory requirements may become necessary,” DEQ wrote of its plan at the time. It also recommended outreach and education, and ways state agencies could help. The committee’s job was to study the problem and recommend voluntary actions polluters could take to reduce the amount of fertilizer, manure and nitrogen-rich wastewater they were putting on the land. Over the years, it grew to include people working for industrial dairies, food processors, the Port of Morrow and farmers growing crops on tens of thousands of acres of land. Manure from confined livestock operations with hundreds of cows or other animals in a limited space contains nitrogen and is also responsible for contaminating the groundwater.ĭEQ formed the groundwater action committee with regional representatives of the regulatory agency as well as people representing industries responsible for the pollution.

Other sources are food processors and the Port of Morrow, the region’s economic powerhouse, which send wastewater high in nitrogen out to area farmers to reuse as fertilizer. Nearly 70% of the nitrate pollution is from irrigated agriculture, or crop farming, according to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.

Many on the groundwater action committee have played a role in the pollution, which is today worse than it was when the group was formed. Many who rely on wells in Morrow and Umatilla counties are Latino and low-income. The aquifer beneath the soil in Morrow and Umatilla counties contains high levels of nitrates, invisible, tasteless, odorless compounds found in farm fertilizers and animal manure that seep beneath the ground and bind with water.įor decades, they have been getting into hundreds of wells that residents drink from, which is dangerous because nitrates consumed over long periods can increase risks for cancer and birth defects. Majority of pollution stems from agriculture

Current and former members of the groundwater action committee expressed optimism about Sasidharan, but skepticism among some current and former members remains over whether the group, which has tried since it was formed in 1997 to find solutions to area groundwater pollution, can make a difference without state funding or regulatory authority and with people representing polluting industries among its membership. She is also a leader of a statewide groundwater research initiative focused on pollution and cleanup. Salini Sasidharan is a sustainable groundwater management engineer and professor at Oregon State University. In July, the group of 14 voted to elect a new leader. Since Morrow County declared an emergency over its groundwater pollution early last month, and as the federal Environmental Protection Agency considers using its emergency authority to intervene in the region, the committee has come under heightened scrutiny from both the public and within its own membership. For 25 years, a volunteer committee of crop and livestock farmers, state and university scientists, local elected officials and business leaders has met to solve an intractable problem of nitrate pollution in the drinking water of hundreds of residents in Morrow and Umatilla counties.Īnd for 25 years, the problem has grown worse.

Focused scrutiny