Building a rural movement in Eastern Oregon for the
well-being of all people and the environment.
Kotek returns to Oregon’s Umatilla Basin as locals grapple with nitrate response
By Antonio Sierra (OPB) and Monica Samayoa (OPB) April 25, 2024
A year ago, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek promised a “new day” for the Lower Umatilla Basin’s decades-long nitrates crisis. When she returned to Boardman this week, Kotek told community leaders that there are many more days of work ahead before the crisis can be solved.
Since Kotek’s last visit, the state has conducted hundreds of well tests and provided filters or bottled water deliveries to many homes with high nitrate levels. Kotek’s 2023 visit was a milestone for residents of Morrow and Umatilla counties, where nitrate pollution had been a known issue for more than three decades by the time she arrived.
Wells are the primary source of drinking water in the region, and testing has shown nitrate contamination levels increasing, with some wells exceeding the federal standard for safe drinking water limit by five times.
Community members and state agencies have been working to begin to address the decades-long challenge. But local residents have grown impatient as levels continue to increase and little has been done to begin to clean up the issue.
Tainted Waters - KGW Video Series
KGW - Sick of waiting on state intervention, eastern Oregonians sue over groundwater contamination
Tainted Waters: Eastern Oregon's contaminated water crisis - English
Agua contaminada: La crisis de agua en el este de Oregón - Con subtitulos en español
Eastern Oregon water Pollution: You questions answered
Groundwater pollution is not just an eastern Oregon problem
Eastern Oregon community organizer's truck burned shortly after meeting on groundwater contamination
We are working to promote
social justice, agricultural and economic sustainability,
and stewardship of the region’s land, air and water.
Agua Segura en la Comunidades Rurales
Petición
Safe Rural Water Communities Petition
Estamos trabajando juntos para mejorar la calidad del agua en nuestra comunidad rural. Sabemos que en nuestra área los resultados de los niveles de nitratos han sido muy elevados en los pozos y en el agua subterránea, nosotros apoyamos el agua de emergencia y las pruebas de pozos y el tratamiento del agua hasta que podamos convertirnos en una comunidad de agua rural segura.
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We are working together for safe drinking water in rural communities. In our area with high nitrates in the groundwater and drinking wells, we support emergency water, well testing and water treatment until we can become a Safe Rural Water Community.
Nonprofit organizes Eastern Oregon Latinos one conversation at a time
The pandemic led Oregon Rural Action to coordinate Latino-focused vaccination drives, but their ambitions go further
Oct. 6, 2022 - Antonio Sierra - Oregon Public Broadcasting
On an early September afternoon in Boardman, the epicenter of Latino community organizing was in a small parking lot buttressed by taco trucks.
The temperature was already starting to creep toward its 104-degree high when a woman stepped up to Oregon Rural Action’s booth.
Community organizers Ana Maria Rodriguez, Rafael Romero and Zaira Sanchez quickly engaged her in Spanish, as they did with nearly every other person who stepped near their booth. It’s a familiar routine: Oregon Rural Action has planted itself in this same parking lot, the thrum of Interstate 84 in the background, once a month for the past year and a half.
Residents in Morrow County demand urgent aid from state for contaminated water
At a community meeting Thursday evening, residents gave impassioned testimony about what it’s been like to live without safe drinking water for years
Sept. 16, 2022 - Alex Baumhardt - Oregon Capital Chronicle
More than 100 Boardman residents attended a meeting Thursday evening to demand the state guarantee access to safe drinking water in Morrow County…
In both English and Spanish, residents expressed outrage over learning just this year that the state had known the groundwater was contaminated for decades and had let it get progressively worse, that they had been forced to pay for expensive filters and bottled water and that so little information had been shared publicly about the risks of consuming high levels of nitrate over long periods.
Eastern Oregon likely to get fraction of money requested from state for drinking water emergency
The state Legislature’s emergency board will consider approving less than one-quarter of the $4 million the Morrow County Commission has requested
Sept. 16, 2022 - Alex Baumhardt - Oregon Capital Chronicle
Doherty said the $882,000 now being considered will not be sufficient to ensure that all of the wells in the counties are tested and that every resident in need will have filters for safe drinking water this year.
Doherty, the Morrow County Public Health Department and Oregon Rural Action, a nonprofit focused on social justice and the environment, have conducted the bulk of the water testing. He said the health authority should have been doing that and paying for it for years. OHA is not responsible by law for water safety in private wells, but it has been responsible for coming up with a plan to help with contaminated well water in Morrow and Umatilla Counties. In 2021, it submitted a plan to do so to the federal Environmental Protection Agency after several organizations petitioned the agency to do something about the area’s water pollution. EPA is still considering whether or not to intervene in the region.
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