Groups rally against bill that would exempt Umatilla County from statewide nuclear ban
Alex Baumhardt | Oregon Capital Chronicle | May 20, 2025
A bill that would exempt Umatilla County from the statewide ban on new nuclear energy facilities has drawn the opposition of environmentalists, tribes, doctors and northeast Oregon community groups who showed up Monday at the Capitol in Salem to rally against it.
If passed, House Bill 2410 would allow the state’s Energy Facility Siting Council to approve development of a modular nuclear reactor in northeast Oregon’s Umatilla County. Oregon voters in 1980 approved a statewide ban on new nuclear development, barring the federal government creates a national repository for nuclear waste or voters decide to appeal. Neither has happened.
The bill’s architects characterize it as allowing a “demonstration project” of modular nuclear that would operate on a microgrid and support “community energy resilience.” Small reactors have about one-third the generating capacity of a traditional reactor, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, and can power individual neighborhoods, factories and facilities such as data centers that consume large amounts of energy.
Nonprofit leader calls LUBGWMA ‘sacrifice zone’ during Senate meeting
Berit Thorson | East Oregonian | May 15, 2025
Going against what state agency representatives and local leaders said, Oregon Rural Action’s Kaleb Lay, director of policy and research, said he’s concerned about the progress in northern Morrow and western Umatilla counties regarding well use and drinking water intervention.
Living in the Lower Umatilla Groundwater Management Area means people using wells for drinking water are at risk of having nitrate contamination at levels above what is safe to consume.
Lay was one of 16 people — including local leaders as well as state agency representatives — who offered testimony Tuesday afternoon, May 13, to the Oregon Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Wildfire during an informational meeting to hear about the LUBGWMA. “It’s important to remember that in a sacrifice zone, public health (and) state policy are pushed to the back while industrial growth (and) economic output are made the focus,” Lay said. “That is exactly what has happened in the Lower Umatilla Basin.”
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Oregon leaders agree the Lower Umatilla Basin’s nitrates are a crisis. But the funds aren’t there
Alejandro Figueroa & Antonio Sierra | OPB | May 15, 2025
“For years, Oregon state agencies, local governments and committees have hashed and rehashed plans to clean up a decades-long nitrates pollution problem in northern Morrow and Umatilla counties. While nitrate levels continue to rise, there’s one constant: These groups say they need more resources and money to get the job done.
Whether they‘ll get it in the near future is not clear.
“The challenge is this is obviously a long-term and expensive project,” state Sen. Jeff Golden, D-Ashland, told OPB. “And we don’t have much bandwidth for expensive projects right now with taxpayer money.’’
Locals on hand for nitrate reduction hearing
By Griffin Beach | Elkhorn Media Group | May 14, 2025
SALEM – The Oregon Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Wildfire had an informational hearing Tuesday on nitrate reduction plan implementation and nitrate management efforts in the Lower Umatilla Basin Ground Water Management Area.
Several local residents testified at the hearing including Port of Morrow Commissioner Joe Taylor, Umatilla County Commissioner Dan Dorran, Morrow County Planning Director Tamra Mabbott, Isabel Gonzalez who sits on the advisory committee for the Morrow County Clean Water Consortium, and Zaira Sanchez of Oregon Rural Action who is a Hermiston resident.
Several representatives from various state departments also spoke, including a representative from Gov. Tina Kotek’s office.
New Oregon bill proposes stronger state action on nitrate pollution in groundwater
By EHN Curators | EHN | May 7, 2025
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek has introduced a bill to give the state more authority to regulate groundwater pollution, drawing both support and widespread opposition from private well owners and the agricultural industry.
Antonio Sierra reports for Oregon Public Broadcasting.
In short:
Senate Bill 1154 would overhaul Oregon’s 36-year-old groundwater protection law, empowering state agencies to enforce pollution controls, particularly against agricultural polluters.
Critics, including hundreds of private well owners and agricultural groups, argue the bill threatens rural water rights and property access, while supporters emphasize the public health dangers posed by rising nitrate levels.
The bill introduces a three-tiered system — green, yellow, and red — to classify groundwater safety and determine regulatory responses, with the strictest measures applied to heavily polluted areas like the Lower Umatilla Basin.
Governor turns ‘lessons’ from Eastern Oregon nitrate crisis into a reform bill
By Antonio Sierra | OPB | May 5, 2025
When Morrow County declared a state of emergency in 2022 over the high levels of nitrates found in the Lower Umatilla Basin’s groundwater, the long-term response to the crisis was a jumble of local committees and state agencies that had made no discernible progress on lowering nitrate levels in more than 30 years. Nearly three years later, the governor is behind a bill that would put the state firmly in charge of groundwater quality across the state.
Senate Bill 1154 is an attempt to rework the 36-year-old Oregon Groundwater Quality Protection Act so that the state relies more on regulation and less on good intentions to fix groundwater pollution. This includes giving state agencies the authority to take action against agricultural polluters, a departure from the current policy that mostly promotes voluntary measures.
Despite being sponsored by Gov. Tina Kotek, the bill does not face a glide path to passage. The agricultural industry is mostly opposed to the bill as it’s written. Hundreds of well owners across the state also have lined up to stop the bill, which they view as an existential threat to rural life.
While the fate of the bill is still uncertain, the governor’s office has indicated that the status quo isn’t working anymore.
Oregon lawmakers punt on bill to prohibit new livestock farms in state’s most polluted areas
By Alejandro Figueroa | OPB | April 9, 2025
The biggest livestock farms could have been prohibited from building new or bigger facilities in some of Oregon’s most polluted groundwater regions under a state legislative bill environmental groups were backing. But it won’t happen this year.
The bill won’t make it to the legislative floor, following a contentious hearing in Salem.
For years, many residents living in the Lower Umatilla Basin in Eastern Oregon have demanded the state government rein in the sources of pollution that have caused a decades-long nitrates crisis in the area, primarily by nitrates from irrigated agriculture and nearby food processing facilities.
That area sits on what’s known as a Groundwater Management Area — designated by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality because of elevated levels of nitrate pollution in groundwater. There’s another area with such designation in the southern Willamette Valley and one in northern Malheur County.
Opposition packs hearing on Gov. Kotek proposal to update critical groundwater area protections
By Alex Baumhardt | Oregon Capital Chronicle | April 9, 2025
Gov. Tina Kotek’s proposal to give state agencies more authority to intervene earlier in Oregon’s contaminated groundwater areas met massive opposition at its first public hearing.
Two rooms and two separate hearings were scheduled Tuesday to accommodate all of the people who went to the Capitol to offer testimony on Senate Bill 1154 during a meeting of the Senate Natural Resources and Wildfire Committee. The bill was sent to the Senate Rules Committee without recommendation, where it will receive another public hearing in the weeks ahead.
Bill advocates say it would provide much-needed updates to the state’s Groundwater Quality Protection Act first passed in 1989. That act was meant to conserve groundwater resources and prevent contamination following well-testing across the state that showed many contained water with high levels of agricultural chemicals.
Merkley encourages crowd to stay engaged, hold government accountable
By Yasser Marte | East Oregonian | March 18, 2025
BOARDMAN — Before stepping into his town hall meeting, Oregon U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley criticized President Donald Trump’s actions with a clear message: “You do not stop a bully by handing over your lunch money and you don’t stop a tyrant by handing them more money.”
Merkley in an interview before his town hall March 18 at the SAGE Center in Boardman said the primary reasons he did not vote with Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer’s support for a budget bill Republicans wrote to avoid a government shutdown were the significant challenges Trump poses to the republic.
Merkley pointed to Trump’s actions, such as firing inspectors general who are meant to prevent corruption, firing FBI officers, intimidating the press and pressuring members of Congress through threats involving Elon Musk’s money and primary challenges.
Group alleges Port of Morrow misled Kotek for permission to dump toxic water
By Kendra Chamberlain | The Oregonian | March 5, 2025
A group of 26 conservation nonprofits, grassroots organizations and community leaders have signed a letter sent to Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek alleging the Port of Morrow, located along the Columbia River in northeastern Oregon, intentionally misled the governor about its wastewater storage capacity while seeking an emergency order earlier this year.
The Feb. 21 letter, authored by advocacy group Oregon Rural Action and undersigned by a former Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) administrator and a former Morrow County commissioner, among others, requests that the governor rescind an executive order she made in January that allows the Port of Morrow to violate its wastewater permit.
“We believe this decision was misguided and may have been based on incomplete, misleading, or inaccurate information,” the letter reads. “[The executive order] needlessly allows for increased pollution during the high-risk winter season when the risk to the public is highest, threatening to worsen an already severe crisis.”
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