By Alex Baumhardt | Oregon Capital Chronicle | Oct. 31, 2024

Nonprofit community groups in Oregon and nationwide are calling on elected leaders and officials at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to exercise their regulatory power to stop growing nitrate pollution in drinking water caused by farm fertilizers. 

Nitrate, a compound found in fertilizers and in animal manure, has contaminated an underground aquifer in northeast Oregon for decades, drawing outcry and concerns in recent years over the public health threat it poses to residents in the area. Nitrate contamination has become a problem in rural communities and cities in many parts of the U.S., spurring a group of nearly two dozen nonprofits from several different states to band together to demand the EPA do more to regulate farms and sources of nitrate. Ingesting elevated nitrate concentrations over long periods is particularly bad for pregnant people and infants, and has been linked to adverse health impacts including different cancers and thyroid problems.

In an Oct. 29 letter to the EPA’s water administrator, leaders at Oregon-based WaterWatch, Columbia Riverkeeper and Oregon Rural Action, along with 20 other groups from around the country, requested the EPA meet with them to discuss what the agency could do under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act to protect people living in areas with high contamination. Under that act, people can petition the EPA to take “primacy” over state agencies and to regulate and enforce penalties against water polluters that the state has not.