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About Baker City herald. (Baker City, Or.) 1990-current | View Entire Issue (April 21, 2022)
Business AgLife B Thursday, April 21, 2022 The Observer & Baker City Herald Lamb Weston/Contributed Photo, File Potatoes run on a conveyor belt at a Lamb Weston processing plant in 2019. DEQ: Plant polluted groundwater with tons of excess nitrate Lamb Weston’s Hermiston plant receives second notice from state about contaminating groundwater J.W. Dippold/Contributed Photo J.W. Dippold, left, of the Imbler FFA chapter, and Justin Sharp, of Fort Rock, compete to see who can stack boxes the fastest using lightsabers at the state FFA convention in March 2022. Sharp served as state FFA vice president and Dippold as state FFA treasurer in 2021-22. Refl ecting on a MEMORABLE YEAR J.W. Dippold served as FFA state treasurer in 2021-22 By ALEX BAUMHARDT By DICK MASON • The Observer Oregon Capital Chronicle HERMISTON — Lamb Weston’s french fry production plant in Hermiston has been discharging too much nitrate-loaded water onto area farms, according to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. The wastewater fl owing from the plant has contaminated the groundwater, causing nitrate levels in some nearby wells to mea- sure four to seven times the safe limit set by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, according to DEQ. The state agency on Thursday, March 31, warned the company that it faced enforce- ment action for contaminating the groundwater. It was the second such notice issued to the company in recent months. In November, DEQ told the company it had been discharging too much tainted water on area farmland and faced enforcement action for that as well. The agency doesn’t disclose such notices on its website or otherwise publicize the fi ndings until an enforcement has been made. The notices ask the company about what steps it intends to take to cure the violations. For the most recent notice, Lamb Weston has 45 days. The agency then will consider whether to require corrective action or fi ne the company, according to Laura Gleim, public aff airs specialist at DEQ. The Hermiston french fry plant is Lamb Weston’s second largest plant in the Columbia River Basin. As of 2019, the plant had more than 500 employees who made nearly 750 million pounds of frozen potato products annually, according to Lamb Weston’s website. Company offi cials could not be immedi- ately reached for comment. The violations were discovered when the plant applied to renew its water dis- charge permit from DEQ. The permit allows the plant to recycle water used to wash and process potatoes, which come into the plant covered in soil and fertil- izers. The facility distributes the waste- water to nearby farms as a source of nutri- ent-rich water for irrigation. But Lamb Weston overapplied the water on farms 75 times between 2016 and 2020, according to compliance reports that DEQ reviewed. During that time, 189 tons of nitrate in excess of permitted levels were applied in an area already deemed a vulner- able groundwater management area. Such areas receive extra resources and planning from DEQ and designated com- mittees in the area to reduce groundwater contamination. DEQ said in its notices that wells downslope from where Lamb Weston’s nitrate-rich wastewater was applied had levels of nitrate between 36 and 79 parts per million. EPA limits for safe drinking water are no more than 10 parts per million. Nitrate is diffi cult and expensive to remove from water, and for those who rely on wells for their drinking water, getting rid of nitrate requires fi lters that cost thousands of dollars. I MBLER — J.W. Dippold is thankful that six years ago, J.D. Cant, then his FFA adviser at Imbler High School, refused to take no for an answer. Dippold believes that if not for Cant’s insistence that he participate in a livestock judging competition in Corvallis in 2016, he might never have become an FFA state offi cer and enjoy what he says was the experience of a lifetime. See, FFA/Page B6 J.W. Dippold/Contributed Photo J.W. Dippold, a member of the Imbler High School FFA chapter, speaks at the 2022 FFA state convention in Redmond. The senior served as the state treasurer and participated in the planning and execution of the convention, which was conducted March 17-21. Audit remains behind schedule layoff . Newly unemployed workers are not typically eligible for benefi ts during that week, but Congress waived the usual waiting period nationwide in an attempt to By MIKE ROGOWAY ease the economic upheaval. The Oregonian The state employment department relies on an obsolete computer system, built on SALEM — Oregon’s latest audit of its technology from the 1990s, even though troubled employment department won’t be Oregon received more than $80 million done until summer, several months behind in federal money back in 2009 to pay for the original schedule. an upgrade. Secretary of State Shemia Fagan The result was that the employ- ordered the audit in February ment department needed to man- 2021, soon after taking offi ce. She ually process tens of thousands of said the audit would explore why claims that fl ooded in when the the Oregon Employment Depart- pandemic hit. Automated mail- ment performed poorly during the ings to laid-off workers were often Fagan COVID-19 pandemic. confusing or fl at-out wrong, and Auditors initially planned to the department’s phone lines were wrap up their work last fall, then pushed jammed for more than a year as claim- back their timeline to spring. Now, they’re ants called in to seek clarity or fi x the targeting sometime in the third quarter of state’s mistakes. this year. Fagan’s offi ce said the review is Prior state audits, and a series of inves- underway and attributed the delay to audi- tigations by The Oregonian/Oregon- tors’ eff orts to be thorough and meet gov- Live, found the employment department ernment auditing standards. had been riddled with dysfunction in Oregon’s employment department was the decade leading up to the pandemic. among the slowest in the nation in paying The state fi red three consecutive depart- jobless benefi ts during the pandemic, ment directors amid a string of setbacks according to an analysis by The Orego- but failed to resolve some issues iden- nian/OregonLive. Nearly 200,000 Orego- tifi ed by state investigators and by the nians joined the ranks of the unemployed news organization. in the spring of 2020 as the pandemic shut The employment department’s prob- down much of the state’s economy. lems became a political fl ashpoint during Tens of thousands of those laid-off Ore- the pandemic. gonians waited weeks or months for their The audit’s new timeline means it won’t benefi ts during the heart of the crisis. arrive before the May gubernatorial pri- And it took Oregon eight months — mary. Instead, the audit will land sometime longer than any other state — to begin during a hotly contested general election, paying benefi ts for the fi rst week after their 16 months after Fagan ordered the review. Oregon’s audit of jobless benefit delays is delayed, again “As auditors do their work they often fi nd new information that can aff ect the timeliness of their work; it is important they are thorough and accurate and gather suffi - cient evidence. This is part of the auditing process and makes it tricky to predict when a report will be complete,” said Ben Morris, spokesperson for the secretary of state. The shifting dates aren’t a postpone- ment, he said, but a normal part of the auditing process. “We understand the desire to get this information out to Oregonians, but part of following government auditing standards is the importance of crossing every ‘t’ and dotting every ‘i’ before making our fi nd- ings public,” Morris said in an email. Veteran employment department man- ager David Gerstenfeld has been running the agency on an acting basis since Gov. Kate Brown fi red his predecessor in May 2020. The department has made several substantial reforms under Gerstenfeld, who set about methodically addressing the department’s lapses and reducing mistakes. Even so, delays and frustrations con- tinued for more than a year after the pan- demic hit. The employment department has chosen a vendor to replace its com- puters and says work is proceeding on schedule. But even so, Oregon doesn’t expect to complete the upgrade until 2025. Brown told The Oregonian/OregonLive a year ago that she would wait to make a decision about long-term leadership at the department, and other possible reforms, until the audit is complete. The new timetable means that Brown’s time in offi ce will be nearly complete by the time auditors fi nish their work.
