Last week, Governor Tina Kotek issued “a state of emergency due to risk of economic shut down,” that allows the Port of Morrow to violate its wastewater permit and dump pollution in ways that present massive risk to local drinking water and public health. The Port has long contributed to nitrate contamination in the area by overapplying its wastewater on nearby fields. And now, despite a pending emergency petition under the Safe Drinking Water Act to the U.S. EPA and rollbacks to the permit’s environmental protections made – at the Port’s behest – within the last three months, the Port will now be allowed to make the problem worse. 

“Governor Kotek’s decision to prioritize entrenched, industrial interests over the safety of communities who have experienced decades of worsening nitrate pollution is shocking,” said Food & Water Watch Staff Attorney Tyler Lobdell. “Not only is this a betrayal of Kotek’s promises to community members, environmental advocates, and the U.S. EPA to address the ongoing nitrate crisis in a timely and effective way, it is a callous slap in the face for the families who are experiencing real health and economic harms due to ongoing nitrate contamination.” 

Governor Kotek’s emergency order allows the Port to violate the very permit and protections that the Department of Environmental Quality considered necessary to better protect local drinking water. The decision to allow increased dumping during the middle of an unusually wet winter further raises the risk of groundwater contamination, as the Port will now be allowed to spread even more untreated industrial wastewater on fields already saturated by rain and snow.   

“Billion-dollar corporations can’t be allowed to threaten people’s jobs unless they’re allowed to pollute with impunity, especially when some of those corporations are making hundreds of millions of dollars in profits every year,” said Kristin Anderson Ostrom, Executive Director of Oregon Rural Action. “This misguided decision will allow the Port to make drinking water pollution worse in the short term and only further entrenches a decades-old imbalance in the region, in which the profits of polluters are prioritized over the public health of the workers who make those profits possible.”