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East Oregonian
Thursday, May 26, 2022
Water:
Help:
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talk sometime today,” Smith
emailed Whitman that day.
The two men did talk about
the impending enforcement
against the port, according to
Smith.
The following day, DEQ
went public with the fine,
declaring in a statement that
the port’s conduct was “reck-
less” because it had “inten-
tionally applied” excessive
amounts of nitrogen into a
critical groundwater area.
The next step coming
up is to seek bids from
third parties to operate
PATH.
Smith explained PATH
would require a general
building with offi ces, plus
common areas, show-
ers and meal facilities.
Also, it would need at
least 12 sleeping units to
“assist people in moving
to permanent housing,” he
said.
Just what the housing
will look like is a question.
The lot is empty, but Shafer
said PATH could use huts
or some type of small
manufactured homes.
The facility would
need onsite staffi ng at all
hours and provide wrap-
around services — basic
medical, dental and vision
services and transporta-
tion assistance for the resi-
dents. Behavioral health or
substance abuse services
should be part of a plan as
well, along with care coor-
dination, case manage-
ment and assistance with
educational services.
Shafer said there
are local organizations
with experience in this
area, such as CAPECO
— Community Action
Program of East Central
Oregon — or Stepping
Stones in Hermiston,
which in 2020 proposed
using Conestoga huts to
shelter homeless residents.
Smith told the groups
at the meeting the city of
Umatilla would issue the
request for bids for the
process, and a commit-
tee of Umatilla County,
Umatilla and Hermiston
would review submissions.
A contract would go before
the Umatilla City Council
for approval.
Smith also said he
expects more discussions
between now and when
PATH would operate.
— East Oregonian
news editor Phil Wright
contributed to this report.
The record fi ne
Kathy Aney for Oregon Capital Chronicle, File
That $1.3 million penalty is
the largest DEQ has imposed
for violating a state water
permit, according to the agen-
cy’s enforcement database.
But DEQ could have gone
further.
According to the notice,
the Offi ce of Compliance and
Enforcement issues, the port
could have received a fi ne of
up to $18,600 for each day it
violated the permit.
That would have totaled
more than $21.6 million.
Like Duane Smith before
him, DEQ hydrologist and
chemist Chad Gubala was
surprised at how low the
fi nal penalty was. He said he
thought the Offi ce of Compli-
ance and Enforcement had
“concluded the fi ne needed
to be of a signifi cant size for
them to actually take it seri-
ously, and to actually prompt
them into spending money
and spending time on treat-
ment rather than just paying
the ticket.”
But when Kieran O’Don-
nell, Compliance and Enforce-
ment manager, got back to
Gubala and Justin Sterger,
DEQ environmental scientist,
he told them, “‘Well, what I
was able to get on this was 1.2
million,’” Gubala recalled.
“We were disappointed at
that size, but it was explained
to us that, you know, the record
fi ne for DEQ had actually just
hit the papers,” Gubala said.
That was in October
2021, when a $2.1 million
fi ne was assessed on Malar-
key Roofi ng for violating its
Four industrial parks with data processing centers, an ethanol plant and food processors surround the Port of Morrow in
Boardman.
air quality permit.
Whitman said in a recent
interview that the agency
wanted to make a point with
the Port of Morrow with the
size of the fi ne, which the port
is now contesting. He said he
had been briefed on the port’s
permitting issues in 2017 and
“things then went pretty quiet
for a while.”
But the 2020 report show-
ing nitrate levels continued
to rise in the area caught his
attention. He said he got more
involved because of what he
heard from staff .
“I was pretty unhappy, to
be frank, when I heard about
some of the levels of noncom-
pliance on this permit,” Whit-
man said.
Meantime, outside infl u-
ences exerted pressure on
DEQ to relent on the tougher
restrictions the agency was
proposing.
The DEQ granted meet-
ings to consider their pitches.
One came from Jake Madison,
a Boardman-area farmer who
was getting wastewater from
the port to irrigate his crops.
DEQ employees sat through
his Powerpoint presentation
on why wastewater was good
for agriculture. His slides
made no reference to the
impacts on drinking water.
Gubala said at the end
of the presentation, Madi-
son asked DEQ give the
port six more months to
review the proposed permit
instead of advancing towards
putting it in place.
“Jake’s not an agent of
the Port of Morrow, he was
requesting this verbally, none
of this was basically offi cial, or
I can’t speak to the legalities of
it, but it was certainly highly
irregular,” Gubala said.
Among those invited to a
January meeting scheduled by
the port with DEQ titled “DEQ
Permit Review Meeting” were
Madison and Dawson Quin-
ton, a legislative aide to Smith.
Gubala said in the end Madi-
son was not allowed to come,
but Quinton was there. Gubala
said the port mostly discussed
getting its new digester system
up and running.
The process was stray-
ing from protocol, Gubala
said, and such presentations
should have been put into the
public record, when DEQ puts
proposed permit restrictions
into a public comment period.
Gubala was so concerned he
independently consulted attor-
neys at the Oregon Depart-
ment of Justice. He didn’t want
to disclose what was discussed
with them.
Sharing the
prosperity message
Before the public could
have its say, the board of the
Port of Morrow scheduled
an unusual joint session with
the Morrow County Board of
Commissioners. The purpose
seemed to be to get local offi -
cials lined up behind the port’s
drive to modify the restric-
Education:
ity and success story that the
community has had over all
these years with the growth of
high value crops.”
The conversation eventu-
ally turned to those not widely
represented at the meeting —
people who rely on the tainted
groundwater for their home
water. Many people with
private wells in the area now
rely on bottled water for cook-
ing and drinking.
Those meeting that day
suggested yet more well test-
ing. They also suggested
seeking money to provide
homeowners with filtering
systems to screen out the
nitrate.
No one volunteered the
port, the farmers, the food
processors or any of the pollut-
ers to help fund such a project.
Instead, the group agreed
to turn to the state and federal
government for money so
thousands could again safely
drink water from their taps.
The request is pending.
— Oregon Capital Chron-
icle developed this story in
collaboration with the Cata-
lyst Journalism Project at the
University of Oregon School
of Journalism and Commu-
nication. Catalyst brings
together investigative report-
ing and solutions journalism
to spark action and response
to Oregon’s most perplexing
issues. To learn more visit
catalystjournalism.uoregon.
edu or follow the project on
Twitter @UO_catalyst.
tions, to speak in common
terms for the port. They met
April 13, at the port, two days
before DEQ was going to open
the port’s permit modifi ca-
tions to public comment.
Once again, Madison took
a leading role.
“The whole point of this
conversation is a regional
approach to DEQ, to say you
have to help us do better, and
by you helping us do better,
you don’t write stupid permits
that we can’t comply with,”
Madison told the group.
He said he and other farm-
ers who receive the port’s
wastewater see themselves as
solutions to the area’s nitrate
problem.
The group got advice on
how to promote the port’s
cause from Len Bergstein, a
political consultant from Port-
land with Northwest Strate-
gies who joined the meeting
over Zoom.
The port hired Bergstein to
help with its communications
strategy to keep the message
consistent: The port is work-
ing in the best interests of the
region both environmentally
and economically, and that it
is working with DEQ to fi nd
solutions to the groundwater
nitrate problem.
Bergstein said at the April
meeting he was “going to try
and line people up so that in
fact DEQ understands that the
regulations that they’re about
to release have a signifi cant
impact on the shared prosper-
DON’T DRINK THE WATER
(1)
Continued from Page A1
effectively. Instead, some
candidates for governor and
state lawmakers have said
the state should cut back on
standardized testing. And the
Legislature dropped require-
ments that schools help all
students demonstrate profi -
ciency in writing and math
before giving them diplomas.
Oregon’s education depart-
ment has a crucial role to play
in holding school districts
accountable for improving
student learning outcomes,
auditors insisted. They told
the governor, state board and
Legislature that is unlikely to
happen without action on their
part.
Low-graduation rates
The Oregon Department
of Education has a well-doc-
umented history of focusing
on school districts’ processes
rather than the results schools
achieve for students, they
wrote. And its timidity about
stating which forms of spend-
ing are eff ective and which are
not, along with its reliance on
superfi cial signs of adherence
to important educational stan-
dards, suggests the $1 billion-
plus-per-year from a new
corporate tax for education
could be put to suboptimal
Nitrates in Boardman water a threat to life (2)
Port of Morrow “Reckless” (3)
East Oregonian, File
Recent testing of private wells reveals dangerously
high levels of Nitrates.
Sixth-grader Lilly Miller reaches into a jar in December
2017 to touch a preserved human brain at Sunridge Middle
School, Pendleton. Oregon leaders’ laissez-faire approach to
public school spending and results puts the state at risk of
wasting public investments and failing to improve student
success, state auditors warned Tuesday, May 24, 2022. The
cursus sem, nec egestas magna.
state education agency doesn’t do much if anything when
schools fail to deliver, including for students of color or stu- s dolor ac ornare consectetur. nam
dents living in poverty.
urpis, eget hendrerit purus. quisque
Nitrate Poisoning may cause:
use, auditors found.
“Our audits have consis-
tently found issues with (the
Oregon Department of Educa-
tion’s) … effective, timely
intervention when districts
or schools struggle,” they
wrote. “State leaders need to
monitor how the agency itself
is performing and intervene
when necessary to ensure
student success does, in fact,
increase.”
Oregon’s graduation rate
remains among the lowest in
the nation, they noted.
Oregon is on its fourth try
at improving K-12 education
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since the 1990s, after leaders o sed ipsum *
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dapibus. nam
Colo-rectal
Cancer
abandoned the previous strat-
sapien.
egies, auditors said. Certif- ante, convallis
* fermentum
Bladder
Cancer
icates of initial mastery, the unt sapien turpis, bibendum tincid-
* Kidney Cancer
Oregon Education Invest-
ment Board and its Achieve- accumsan cursus.
curabitur ullam-
* Anemia
ment Compacts are among the
porttitor feugiat
* Thyroid
Dysfunction
high-profi le eff orts that past nec ante varius,
governors and lawmakers erra. etia ornare condimentum
* Among other diseases.
instituted — then abandoned
before they took full eff ect, fermentum massa fringilla nec.
the auditors wrote. The idea
felis ipsum. pellentesque eget mi
behind the master certifi cates
was that schools would have volutpat nunc nec, accumsan leo.
to ensure students mastered
reading, writing, math and sto id lectus consequat hendrerit.
other academic skills to grad- augue ut metus fringilla pellen-
uate, but that never happened.
Repairs to contaminated wells and filtration systems
can be costly.
et erat. n lla o s
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1pm Shotgun Start
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Putting contest to win a pair of Blazers Tickets.
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Know Your Rights
1 East Oregonian, Tuesday May 10, 2022
2 East Oregonian, Tuesday May 10, 2022 (Emphasis added)
3 DEQ, Jan. 11, 2022 ($1.3M fine)
Attorneys licensed in California. Lawyer Ad. Investigations ongoing.
Worthington & Caron, P.C.* www.WorthingtonCaron.com 1-800-831-9399