Press Release: Port of Morrow Invokes EO 25-02

Oregon Rural Action
P.O. Box 1231
La Grande, OR 97850
Phone (541) 975-2411
www.oregonrural.org

Contact: Kaleb Lay, Director of Policy & Research
kalebl@oregonrural.org; 541-805-8651

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Feb. 19, 2025

Port of Morrow Begins Violating Pollution Permit with Governor’s Blessing
Port Votes to Use Governor’s Emergency Powers, Dump Contaminated Wastewater in Area Already Wracked by Polluted Drinking Water

Boardman – This week, the Port of Morrow began violating its DEQ Permit by dumping highly contaminated industrial wastewater onto farmland in the Lower Umatilla Basin, invoking an emergency order granted to it by Governor Kotek last month.

The Port’s permit expressly forbids it to overload fields with wastewater because doing so can cause pollution to leach to groundwater. However, EO 25-02 allows the Port to violate that permit with relative impunity for the rest of the winter, when the risk of groundwater contamination is highest.

Governor Kotek granted the Port of Morrow’s request to violate its permit under threat of mass layoffs from the Port and its tenants. Many of those tenants are million- or billion-dollar corporations that make processed foods, operate natural gas power plants, or run data centers in the area.

The decision follows not only thousands of permit violations by the Port in recent years, but also a report from DEQ that found nitrate pollution in the area has continued to get worse. That report’s findings also found that groundwater contamination tends to peak in spring and that land use decisions had a direct impact on groundwater, confirming that winter is the worst possible time for the Port to spread its contaminated wastewater on local fields.

“We should all be clear-eyed about the fact that this is going to hurt our groundwater and the people who rely on it in the short-term,” said Kristin Anderson Ostrom, executive director of Oregon Rural Action. “The fact that the Port is doing this with the Governor’s blessing and won’t be held accountable by state agencies, despite their millions of dollars in daily economic output, just adds insult to injury for the victims of this crisis.”

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