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.