HERALD
OPINION
and
reader’s
forum
Wednesday, July 13, 2022
OUR VIEW
Time for
solutions
to water
emergency
I
t shouldn’t be this difficult. It shouldn’t be a great
leap — as the richest nation in the world — to expect
clean drinking water.
Yet, in Morrow County — as a recent investigation by
Salem’s Capital Chronicle news outlet showed — clean
drinking water is a bridge too far.
We’ve remained relatively silent editorially on the mat-
ter because we expected — once the facts of this partic-
ular case were made public — a widespread federal and
state response. So far as we can tell, that’s been lacking.
The crux of the matter is a simple one. As the Capital
Chronicle showed in its investigative series, the Port of
Morrow allowed more than 600 tons of excess nitrogen
from its wastewater to be applied on farmland on top of
the area’s already contaminated aquifer in the last decade.
At the same time, the Oregon Department of Environ-
mental Quality did little to enforce penalties on the port
when it violated its wastewater permit.
The state eventually laid down a $2.1 million fine on
the port.
Recently, voters quizzed U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden on the
matter during a town hall session. Wyden referred to
an idea where a group of local governments, businesses
and residents could come together and tackle the is-
sue. That type of plan has worked, to some extent, for
Wyden before. His efforts to create a diverse group to
help solve management issues of the Owyhee Canyon-
lands in the southeastern part of the state was a triumph
of diplomacy.
However, the water issues in Morrow County are quite
different than the land-use issues tied to the canyonlands.
Clean drinking water is what separates highly ad-
vanced, digital-age societies from the 19th century. To
encounter a clean drinking water issue in the U.S., in Or-
egon, in this day and age should be nearly unthinkable.
However, here we are.
Wyden and the rest of the state’s federal lawmaking
delegation need to step in and prompt federal authorities
to take on this issue. Clearly, the problem evolved out of
the realm of a state or local response almost immediately.
Once federal help is on the way and visible, then the state
must review the entire case and start asking some very
pointed questions to several state agencies, starting with
the DEQ.
Finally, those who are in charge at the Port of Morrow
need to stand up and publicly respond to what was an ap-
parent decade-long plan to ignore state rules.
A clean drinking water issue should not be occurring
in the U.S. early in the 21st century.
PUBLIC OFFICIALS
President Joe Biden
Comment line: 202-456-1111
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden
221 Dirksen Senate Office Bldg.
Washington, DC 20510
La Grande office: 541-962-7691
U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley
313 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Pendleton office: 541-278-1129
U.S. Representative
Cliff Bentz
1239 Longworth
House Office Building
Washington, DC, 20515
202-225-6730
State Rep. Greg Smith, District 57
900 Court St. NE, H-482
Salem, OR 97301
503-986-1457
State Sen. Bill Hansell, District 29
900 Court St. NE, S-423
Salem, OR 97301
503-986-1729
COLUMN
Which Johnson would govern?
STEVE
FORRESTER
WRITER’S NOTEBOOK
B
etsy Johnson entered my office at
The Astorian in 2000 as a candidate
for the state House of Representa-
tives. Decades prior, our family histories
intersected when my father and John-
son’s mother were colleagues on the state
Board of Higher Education. They had a
simpatico relationship. So I was inclined
to like this legislative candidate. And I
did.
Not being a pollster, I will leave it to oth-
ers to speculate on the viability of Johnson’s
strategy for winning the three-way race she
has with Democrat Tina Kotek and Repub-
lican Christine Drazan. What interests me
much more is what kind of governor she
would be.
Oregon has not had a governor with busi-
ness ownership in their background since
Victor Atiyeh, our last Republican governor,
who led the state from 1979 to 1987. Ati-
yeh grasped the concept of being the state’s
CEO.
Our state government has grown consid-
erably since the 1980s, but some of the same
challenges beg for oversight. With govern-
ment’s growth, the state’s dependence on
computer systems and software platforms
has grown markedly. And Oregon has
lacked a governor who grasped that particu-
lar challenge and dealt with it.
Volume 115 • Number 28
Andrew Cutler | Publisher • acutler@hermistonherald.com • 541-278-2673
Erick Peterson | Editor • epeterson@hermistonherald.com • 541-564-4536
Angel Aguilar | Multi-Media consultant • aaguilar@hermiston herald.com 541-564-4531
Audra Workman | Office Manager • aworkman@eastoregonian.com • 541-564-4538
Tammy Malgesini | Community Editor • community@eastoregonian.com • 541-564-4532
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Member of EO Media Group Copyright ©2022
Journal of the American Medical Associa-
tion. Its conclusions were: “Gunshot injury
costs represent a substantial burden to the
medical care system. Nearly half this cost is
borne by the US taxpayers,” (Aug. 4, 1999).
David Hemenway, of the Harvard School
of Public Health, was a leading explorer of
the intersection of firearm woundings and
deaths and public health. “Private Guns,
Public Health” was his 2004 book. The vir-
tue of Hemenway’s work and other public
health physicians is that it moved the gun is-
sue away from politics and emotion into the
world of medicine, healing and prevention.
In an attempt to have a fruitful dialogue
with Johnson, I gave her one of Hemenway’s
papers. At that point, this very articulate
woman said nothing in response.
I was sorry to hear Johnson’s response to
the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, but
it was the Betsy I listened to some 20 years
ago.
I know that her independent campaign
for governor demands that she cultivate a
hard-line stance for the single-issue voter –
to cut into the Republican electorate. That’s
fine for short-term thinking. But it is not
leadership for what has become a mortal
concern.
Put simply, Johnson is on the wrong
side of history. And if Oregon has another
Umpqua Community College shooting
(2015), Clackamas Town Center incident
(2012) or Thurston High School shooting
(Kip Kinkel, 1998), most Oregonians will
want much more than a clichéd response
from their governor.
that is known to have high nitrate levels for
decades. This is also an older development
that would not meet today’s standards. It is
1-acre lots with individual septic systems
and shared wells. What are the chances that
they may have failed septic systems that are
contributing to their own problem?
The high nitrate issue has been around
for decades. I can remember my friend
Carol Michaels decades ago when she
worked for Oregon State University Ex-
tension Service encouraging people in
the area to check their wells for nitrates,
and passing out literature at public events,
such as the Irrigon Watermelon Festival
and Morrow County Fair. State law that
has been around for decades requires a
test of the domestic well in any real estate
transaction and the results be given to the
buyer. This is not a new problem.
Jim was quoted as saying that before he
and Commissioner Melissa Lindsay were
elected, that the relationship between the
Port of Morrow and county government was
like the tail wagging the dog. During my 12-
year tenure as a county commissioner we
had quarterly meetings with the Port of Mor-
row, city of Boardman and Morrow County.
We met in the same room and tried to work
on mutual problems for the public good. We
didn’t always agree on the solutions, but were
always civil to each other. Not the scream-
ing and yelling and finger-pointing that
Commissioner Jim Doherty likes to do. The
emergency meeting that was called to declare
the emergency barely met the public notice
requirements. None of the regional part-
ners, including the cities of Boardman and
Irrigon, were notified. One can only wonder
if that was done to exclude the public from
participating. There was no reason for the
fear-mongering that has taken place. There
was no reason to cast a shadow of doubt on
city water, which is continually tested. Jim
Doherty needs to be part of a solution and
not just a finger pointer. If he wants to point
the finger at the problem, he only needs to
look in the mirror.
John Wenholz
Irrigon
█
Steve Forrester, the former editor and publisher of The
Astorian, is the president and CEO of EO Media Group.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Jim Doherty needs to be part of a
solution, not just a finger pointer
I’ve read the recent articles on the Port of
Morrow being fined by Oregon Department
of Environmental Quality for over application
of nitrogen. I’ve also read Morrow County
Commissioner Jim Doherty’s spin on blam-
ing the high nitrates in the area solely on the
Port of Morrow. Attached from one of those
articles is a pie chart where the DEQ estimates
where the nitrates come from.
The Port of Morrow along with food pro-
cessing in Umatilla County accounts for
4.6%. The Port of Morrow handles the dis-
charge water from food processors in Mor-
row County. This is the only group that is
regulated by DEQ, and they are only a small
portion of a bigger problem. Jim Doherty
is a cattleman, and if I add the 8.1% from
pastures with the confined animal feeding
operations of 12.9%, I get 22% attributed
to Jim Doherty’s industry. Onsite, which is
septic tanks and drain fields, is 3.9%. Jim has
been targeting an area in rural Boardman
HERMISTON
HERALD
Oregon’s state government’s computer
system disasters are no secret. Refreshing
my memory about those malfunctions,
I consulted a man with some 30 years of
watching the statehouse – Dick Hughes, our
newspaper’s Salem columnist. “They’re aw-
ful,” Hughes said.
On the one hand, computer systems
have become the nervous systems of most
businesses and governments. On the other
hand, no candidate for state office will run
on a platform of improving them. This is
not sexy stuff.
Based on what Hughes tells me and what
I know of Johnson, she would have the
moxie to ask the tough questions of systems
and software providers who are contracted
to serve the divisions of state government
– which are equivalent to large companies –
in terms of their payroll, budget and the size
of the customer base they serve.
Guns, however, are a sexy issue – a highly
visible flashpoint. When Johnson told me,
more than a decade ago, about the machine
gun that she purchased at an auction, I was
startled. In U.S. Marine Corps infantry
training, I had fired the M60 machine gun.
Why, I wondered, would anyone not in uni-
form want that killing machine?
When Johnson and I had this conversa-
tion, a national community of public health
physicians was gathering numbers on the
scale of gun woundings, deaths and sui-
cides. They argued that America should rec-
ognize this as a public health issue. A calam-
ity. An epidemic.
An example of this public health perspec-
tive was “The Medical Costs of Gunshot In-
juries in the United States,” published in the
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