A Lamb Weston potato plant in Boardman at the Port of Morrow. (Kathy Aney/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
Potato products giant Lamb Weston is the latest defendant in a class action lawsuit over contaminated groundwater to settle with residents of Morrow County in northeast Oregon in exchange for no admission of guilt in the pollution.
The corporation, famous for frozen fries, tots and other products will pay $25 million to settle in Pearson v. Port of Morrow, a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in February 2024 by several Morrow County residents who cannot drink their nitrate-contaminated water.
Lamb Weston is one of 17 total defendants, including 10 previously unnamed ones. Officials for the company did not immediately respond to the Capital Chronicle’s request for comment on Thursday morning.
Tech giant Amazon settled for $20.5 million in March and Madison Ranches, with more than 20,000 acres of onions, hay and row crops across Morrow and Umatilla counties, settled in August for $6.2 million, also in exchange for no admission of guilt.
That brings the total sum of settlement dollars — which will mostly go to a fund to help residents dependent on private wells for drinking water to install water filtration systems, dig deeper wells or help pay water bills if they choose to connect to city water systems — to more than $42 million.
The nitrate pollution is in part a byproduct of fertilizer-laden wastewater collected from industrial food processors and data centers at the port that is then sent out to area farms to be spread across fields.
A Capital Chronicle investigation found that for years the port publicly touted this as a waste-water reuse program, but as it collected larger and larger amounts of polluted water from its industrial customers, it became more of a dumping scheme as officials opted to spread it on fields in winter that could not fully absorb it, rather than paying for adequate cleaning and storing systems.
Many of those who rely on wells in the affected areas of Morrow and Umatilla counties are low-income and Latino. Overexposure to nitrates over time is harmful to infants and can lead to cancer and thyroid disease in people of all ages.