REGION
TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 2022
THE OBSERVER — A3
Oregon hikes
fi ne for Port of
Morrow to $2.1M
DEQ increases
penalty for
additional nitrate
violations in
Eastern Oregon
East Oregonian
Yasser Marte/East Oregonian
Lori Case, left, and her daughter, Miranda Case, share a quiet moment Friday afternoon, June 10, 2022, at the First Christian Church,
Pendleton. The family is raising money for Miranda’s heart transplant surgery.
Needing a new heart
Pendleton teen and
her family work to
raise money for her
heart transplant
By YASSER MARTE
East Oregonian
PENDLETON — Miranda Case
sat with her parents on the benches
of the First Christian Church, Pend-
leton, and recalled her open heart
surgery.
“I remember being in the hospital
when I was 4 and a half, but I don’t
remember the surgery,” she said. “I
just remember being there.”
Case, who is going to be a sopho-
more in high school, was born with
left hypoplastic heart syndrome, a
rare congenital left heart defect. The
syndrome causes the right side of
the heart to pump blood to the lungs,
making it diffi culty for oxygen-rich
blood to go through the rest of the
body.
Since her birth, Miranda as been
through four surgeries. But she
doesn’t allow her condition to get in
the way of living a normal life.
“I have my regular seven-hour
school day I go to during the week,”
Case said. “And I go to dance. It’s
traditional dance — hip-hop, jazz,
contemporary. Practices are normally
an hour and a half, which is four to
fi ve days a week.”
She’s performed on stage and at
the Oregon City High School state
dance competitions.
“I plan to go to college, but I don’t
know what I want to pursue,” Case
said. “But at this point and time I do
plan to go to college.”
She has lived with a tight commu-
nity who’s been supporting her since
she was baby.
Along with contemplating her
future, she deals with the thought of
having to tend to her heart’s medical
Yasser Marte/East Oregonian
Lori Case, left, and her husband, Tod
Case, talk with their daughter, Miranda
Case, about her dance routines Friday,
June 10, 2022, on the steps of the First
Christian Church, Pendleton. The family
is raising money for Miranda’s heart
transplant surgery.
needs for the rest of her life.
“It’s very nerve-racking about get-
ting a transplant because she’ll be
on anti-rejection meds the rest of her
life,” said her mother, Lori Case.
Her father, Tod Case, echoed his
wife.
“It’s always a concern when they
place a diff erent heart in her body
that her body could reject,” he said.
Miranda Case is under Status 1B
on the transplant list. Those individ-
uals are generally not required to stay
in the hospital as in-patients and have
the second-highest priority on the
heart transplant list.
Although she is no stranger to
heart procedures, her parents carry
the brunt of emotional weight going
from one surgery to the next.
“The fi rst surgery was the hardest
until we had to have an open heart
surgery that was not planned,” Lori
Case said. “We knew that she was
going to have to need three but when
she had the fourth one, that was very
nerve-racking.”
According to Lori Case, this
upcoming heart transplant procedure
will take place in Seattle. The family
is unaware of when a heart trans-
plant will occur, but when a match
does arrive they will have only a few
hours to arrive in Seattle.
In the meantime, the Case family
has found ways to spread the word of
the surgery and help fund Miranda’s
medical fi nances.
“Funding is through COTA,
Children’s Organ Transplant Asso-
ciation. Anyone who is under 18 can
qualify to use them as a fundraising
agent,” Lori Case said. “They do
not charge us anything and a hun-
dred percent will go in honor of
Miranda’s name.
Children’s Organ Transplant
Association is a nonprofi t organi-
zation that will cover costs across
the board, when they turn in their
receipts — hospital bills, food,
hotels, travels and the anti-rejec-
tion medications. Any leftover funds
stay put, and if Miranda Case needs
another heart transplant she can use
Children’s Organ Transplant Associ-
ation again as an adult.
The goal is to raise $50,000.
So far, the Case family’s eff orts
have raised $17,000 on COTA’s
website: cota.org/campaigns/
COTAforMirandasJourney.
The Cases have helped spread
awareness about Miranda’s situation
in a variety of ways, including selling
snacks and candy bouquets at the
Pendleton Farmers Market.
If the Cases make $25,000 by
June 30, they are eligible to receive a
$2,500 grant for Miranda’s surgery.
BOARDMAN —
Oregon Department of
Environmental Quality
has increased the penalty
against the Port of Morrow
from $1.3 million to a little
more than $2.1 million.
State environmental reg-
ulators levied the initial
fi nes in January, accusing
the port of excessively
spreading nitrogen-rich
wastewater as fertilizer on
area farmland for years.
DEQ announced in a state-
ment Friday, June 17, the
additional $800,000 is
“for additional violations
involving over application
of wastewater containing
nitrogen to agricultural
fi elds in the Lower Uma-
tilla Basin, an area with
longstanding groundwater
contamination.”
The Port of Morrow has
been appealing the $1.3 mil-
lion in fi nes. Port Executive
Director Lisa Mittelsdorf
was not available June 17
for comment.
According to the state-
ment from DEQ, the Port
of Morrow is one of many
sources contributing to
nitrate contamination in
northern Morrow and Uma-
tilla counties — an area
known as the Lower Uma-
tilla Basin Groundwater
Management Area.
The primary source of
contamination in the area,
about 70%, is from fertil-
izer use on irrigated farm-
land, according to the man-
agement area’s action plan.
Additional contributors
are dairy and cattle farms
(about 20%), food pro-
cessing facilities, such as
the port, that reuse waste-
water to irrigate fi elds
(about 5%) and residential
septic systems and other
sources (about 5%).
The Port of Morrow col-
lects wastewater from food
processors, storage facilities
and data centers in its indus-
trial park outside Boardman.
The port has a DEQ water
quality permit that allows
it to use the nitrogen-rich
wastewater for irrigation on
nearby farms, but the permit
includes limits on how
much nitrogen the port can
apply to the farmland and
how much nitrate and mois-
ture can be present in soil
prior to applications.
“The amended notice
cites the port for addi-
tional occurrences of
applying wastewater con-
taining nitrogen to fi elds
that already had too much
existing nitrate or moisture
in the soil,” according to
the statement. “Having too
much nitrate or moisture
in the soil when applying
wastewater increases
the likelihood of nitrates
fl owing down into the
groundwater rather than
remaining in the soil for
crops to use.”
DEQ also reported the
port documented additional
violations to DEQ in its
annual report and in email
and phone reports of non-
compliance. The additional
violations occurred from
November 2020 to February
2021 and November 2021 to
February 2022.
The revised fi ne totals
$2,100,351.
DEQ in its amended
notice stated it “acknowl-
edges that the port is
committed to fi nding a
long-term solution to the
management of its waste-
water that both promotes
benefi cial reuse and is pro-
tective of public health and
the environment.”
Even so, according to the
notice, since DEQ issued the
notice, the Port of Morrow
has not submitted a plan to
achieve compliance with the
nitrogen loading limits in
the permit. The new notice
requires the port to “develop
and implement an approval
plan to achieve compli-
ance with both the nitrogen
loading and moisture con-
tent limits in the permit.”
Because the port already
has an appeal going with
the initial fi ne, the DEQ
explained it does not need
to submit a new appeal,
although it can submit
an amended request for a
hearing.
The state environmental
department also encour-
aged the port to collabo-
rate with local partners to
complete a “Supplemental
Environmental Project” that
addresses high nitrate con-
centrations in the drinking
water in the groundwater
management area. DEQ
stated the port could resolve
as much as 80% of the pen-
alty through such a project.
Oregon Rural Action in
a press release before the
DEQ announced the larger
penalty issued a notice that
Morrow County Commis-
sioner Jim Doherty was
meeting with Boardman
residents in the West Glen
neighborhood where most
of the 60 wells tested had
above the maximum con-
tamination levels for
nitrates, with dozens up to
fi ve times the level.
Over half of state’s dirtiest power plants are in Umatilla, Morrow counties
By ANTONIO ARREDONDO
East Oregonian
PENDLETON — Two
Oregon environmental
groups just posted their
power plant cleanliness fi nd-
ings, and the results look
grim for plants in Umatilla
and Morrow counties — at
least for now.
Six of the top 10 dirt-
iest plants in the entire state
are found in the two coun-
ties, research from the Envi-
ronment Oregon Research
& Policy Center and
Oregon State Public Interest
Research Group found.
The two sister groups
looked at data from the
EPA’s eGRID, a compre-
hensive database that shows
the environmental charac-
teristics of nearly all of the
nation’s power plants.
While none of Oregon’s
power plants fell in the top
100 dirtiest in the country,
this doesn’t mean that the
power plants were in the
clear. The top operating
plant, Hermiston Power
Plant in Hermiston, produces
1,564,008 metric tons of
CO2 emissions.
“Climate change is here
and already impacting lives,”
Celeste Meiff ren-Swango,
state director at Environment
Oregon, said. “We need
to do everything we can
to move away from fossil
fuels and toward renewable
energy.”
That action has already
taken place in Boardman.
The fi nal coal-powered plant
in the state — rated the dirt-
iest plant in Oregon in 2020
— was dismantled in 2021.
With coal plants out of the
picture, next up could be nat-
ural gas plants. These plants,
mostly operated by Portland
General Electric, are also
changing.
“Our natural gas plants
constitute a part of our gen-
eration fl eet that is changing,
and will continue to do so,”
Allison Dobscha, a spokes-
person for PGE, said. “These
plants will serve a diff erent
purpose in the future than
they do today, serving more
as capacity resources that
can provide fl exibility and
reliability when needed.”
The remaining nine
plants on the list are powered
by methane gas, and the pro-
posed shift away from gas to
cleaner energy is something
Meiff ren-Swango is hopeful
for.
“This list underscores
how methane is an extremely
potent gas,” the Environment
Oregon director said, “We
will fi gure out better ways
to power our lives before it’s
too late.”
With Oregon Gov. Kate
Brown signing a clean
energy bill that promises
100% renewable energy for
electricity by 2040, Meif-
fren-Swang believes that
change is coming, and soon.
Charles & Eileen
Stewart
10304 A 1st St.
Island City, OR
cstewartpc@gmail.com
541.910.5435
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