Alex Baumhardt
Oregon Capital Chronicle
A groundwater protection bill proposed by Gov. Tina Kotek passed its final vote in the Oregon House Friday and will now go to her desk for signing. The bill passed in the Senate earlier this month.
Kotek said Senate Bill 1154 will provide long overdue updates to the state’s Groundwater Quality Protection Act first passed in 1989, giving state agencies more authority to coordinate and to intervene early in Oregon’s contaminated groundwater areas.
Since 1989, three critical groundwater management areas have been identified in Oregon. They are all still considered to be in critical condition due to nitrate contamination, almost entirely from agricultural fertilizers and animal manure, and none have seen vast improvement in the last two to three decades.
But groups who helped craft and champion the bill earlier in the session pulled support before the bill was voted on earlier this month, claiming Kotek had allowed representatives from polluting industries to take the regulatory teeth out of it.
“The governor’s bill started with great potential, and as passed, SB 1154 does make important process improvements for areas with emerging contamination,” said Kristin Anderson Ostrom, executive director of the nonprofit Oregon Rural Action, in a statement. “However, it fails to learn the most important lesson of the LUBGWMA (Lower Umatilla Basin Groundwater Management Area) – that political pressure from powerful polluters dictates how agencies regulate those same polluters.”
The Lower Umatilla Basin Groundwater Management Area, designated as critically impaired in 1990, has gotten worse under state supervision. A volunteer committee established in 1997 to tackle problems has had little to no impact.