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THE ASTORIAN • THuRSdAy, SEpTEmbER 1, 2022
Megan Farmer/KUOW
Rachel Kidd, in blue, gathered with other members of the Chinook Indian Nation and allies
on the steps of the Henry M. Jackson Federal Building on Monday in Seattle.
Capital Press
A crop duster sprayed a potato field with fungicide.
Ag groups claim regulators
misrepresent pesticide data
Requests for
more context
By MATEUSZ
PERKOWSKI
Capital press
Oregon regulators have
come under fire from agricul-
ture and forestry advocates
for allegedly misrepresenting
information about pesticides
in waterways to the public.
A new online data viewer
displays information about
pesticides detected in 12
river basins by the state’s
Department of Environmen-
tal Quality and Department of
Agriculture.
The state government pro-
moted the interactive tool as
helping “Oregonians who
want to know what pesticides
are in their local streams,” but
several natural resource orga-
nizations say that’s an inac-
curate characterization of the
data.
“We dug into what the tool
is showing and how it is being
presented, and it is so mislead-
ing,” said Mary Anne Cooper,
vice president of government
affairs for the Oregon Farm
Bureau. “It has a high like-
lihood of being used against
producers on the ground.”
The tool invites data to be
taken “out of context” and
“will surely result in unjusti-
fied concerns over water qual-
ity,” according to the Oregon
Farm Bureau, Oregon Asso-
ciation of Nurseries, Ore-
gon Forest Industries Council
and Oregonians for Food and
Shelter agribusiness group.
“The presentation is
almost what we’d expect
from activist groups,” Coo-
per said.
The problem is not that
the data is incorrect or that
it’s being disclosed, since the
information has always been
publicly available, she said.
Rather, the online tool fails
to explain that data was col-
lected at highly targeted loca-
tions and times when pesti-
cides were more likely to be
detected, said Katie Murray,
executive director of Orego-
nians for Food and Shelter.
“This is a very biased data
set — intentionally biased,”
Murray said.
The data was gathered
as part of the state’s Pesti-
cide Stewardship Partnership,
which was formed by the
Department of Environmen-
tal Quality, the Department of
‘dEQ IS ACTIVELy pRESENTING
THIS dATA AS IF WE CAN
GENERALIZE FROm IT AbOuT
THE SAFETy OF THE WATER
ANd WE CANNOT. THEy’RE
ENCOuRAGING pEOpLE TO
mISuNdERSTANd THIS dATA.’
Katie Murray | executive director of Oregonians for Food and Shelter
Agriculture and other agen-
cies in 2000 to support vol-
untary improvements to pes-
ticide practices.
By taking samples imme-
diately downstream from
farms after spring rains, for
example, the program seeks
to maximize detections,
according to industry groups.
Pesticide users can then see if
their strategies to keep chem-
icals out of waterways are
proving effective.
To monitor for pesticides
on a watershed-scale, how-
ever, samples would need to
be taken at random sites and
times, with the data likely
reflecting less frequent pesti-
cide detections at lower con-
centrations, they said. With-
out these caveats, though,
the government’s online data
viewer creates an exaggerated
impression of pesticide levels
and health risks.
“That’s not what that data
meant. It’s telling the wrong
story,” Murray said. “DEQ
is actively presenting this
data as if we can generalize
from it about the safety of the
water and we cannot. They’re
encouraging people to misun-
derstand this data.”
A stakeholder advisory
committee raised concerns
about such misperceptions,
which government officials
seem to have ignored, crit-
ics say. The Pesticide Stew-
ardship Partnership relies on
cooperation from farmers and
other pesticide users, but the
online tool threatens to under-
mine that trust.
“Nobody knew that is how
they’d use the data 10 to 20
years down the road,” Mur-
ray said.
The Pesticide Steward-
ship Partnership’s data-driven
education has been more
effective at reducing water
pesticide levels than stan-
dard regulatory approaches,
Cooper said. In recent years,
however, the program hasn’t
engaged as closely with indi-
vidual farmers.
Now, the data viewer will
likely serve as a cudgel in
legislative disputes over pes-
ticides, particularly since it
implies “even the agencies
acknowledge this is a prob-
lem” with waterway pollu-
tion, she said.
“You’re just going to
inflame situations,” Cooper
said. “It makes it hard to see
how they will explain the full
picture to lawmakers and the
public.”
When asked about these
concerns, the Department of
Environmental Quality said
the tool provides “additional
context” for the “current and
historic monitoring data,”
such as federal benchmarks
for protecting “the health of
aquatic life and humans.”
“To aid the public’s under-
standing of the data, and to
address concerns that the raw
data could be misinterpreted
or misused, DEQ displays
the data in the manner consis-
tent with how DEQ and ODA
interpret the data to manage
the program,” the agency said
in an email.
The Department of Agri-
culture said the data tool is
“not intended to be a compre-
hensive source of pesticide
distribution in state waters,”
but helps pesticide users
and other partners achieve
“measurable environmental
improvements.”
In response to feedback
from stakeholders, a pop-up
explaining the context and
scope of the data now appears
when the online tool is
accessed, the agency said in
an email.
The data viewer was
developed by Department
of Environmental Quality to
provide transparency and eas-
ier access to program data,
and the Department of Agri-
culture is “committed to
working with DEQ to peri-
odically update” the tool, the
agency said.
Chinook Indian Nation members
rally for federal recognition
Protest held
in Seattle
By SCOTT
GREENSTONE
KNKX
SEATTLE — Mem-
bers of the Chinook Indian
Nation rallied on Monday
on the steps of a federal
building to raise awareness
for their long fight to get
federal recognition.
Tony Johnson, the tribal chair-
man, said his great-great-grand-
father and other leaders first
hired lawyers to sue for their
lands back in the 1890s.
Federal recognition would
mean access to federal dol-
lars for health care and
housing for the Chinook,
who are based in southwest-
ern Washington state, par-
ticularly Pacific County.
The rally was the start of a
campaign by Chinook lead-
ership, they said, to pressure
U.S. Sen. Patty Murray and
U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell
— Washington state Dem-
ocrats — to use their influ-
ence in Congress to get the
Chinook recognized.
For a brief time 20 years
ago, the Clinton adminis-
tration recognized the Chi-
nook Indian Nation, but
the Bush administration
revoked that decision in
2002 after another Indig-
enous nation in Washing-
ton state, the Quinault,
appealed to the federal
Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Johnson said during a
speech on Monday that the
Chinook Indian Nation,
which is made up of five
tribes — the Cathlamet,
Clatsop, Lower Chinook,
Wahkaikum and Willapa
— refused to sign a treaty
that would force them to
lose their land and there-
fore was never moved to a
reservation.
“That place where I
drove from this morning
with my wife and two of my
five kids is the place where
our sovereignty springs
from,” Johnson said. “We
are a sovereign nation,
regardless of the govern-
ment’s confusion, and our
sovereignty comes from the
land and our ancestors.”
Johnson’s son Tahoma
Johnson was there as well,
and he said opportuni-
ties for work and hous-
ing in Pacific County are
scarce. He lives in a trailer
on someone else’s property,
according to his father.
“That really bugs me
because a recognized Chi-
nook (nation) would have
an opportunity to provide
him housing,” Johnson
said.
Rachel Cushman, the
secretary-treasurer for the
Chinook, said she was
just 15 in 2002 when she
heard the news of the Bush
administration’s revocation
of her tribe’s status. After
crying with her mother, she
still had to get on the bus
and go to work — at the
Bureau of Indian Affairs,
where she was apprenticed
to a fish biologist.
“I didn’t want to go
into a space that made me
feel less than, because
that’s how I felt my whole
life,” Cushman said. “I
felt less than. And I was
made to feel less than. I
went into an office full of
Native people feeling less
than.”
Cantwell did not imme-
diately respond to a request
for comment. Zack DiGre-
gorio, a spokesperson for
Murray, said in a statement
that she understands how
important tribal recogni-
tion efforts are and “how
critical it is that all voices
involved be heard” but
didn’t commit to making
any changes.
“She will continue to do
her best to serve as a voice
in the United States Sen-
ate for Washington’s tribal
governments and tribal
people,” DiGregorio said
via email.
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