Lamb Weston at the Port of Morrow operates May 10, 2022. The plant provides some of the wastewater the port pumps to agricultural fields in the Boardman area.

By PHIL WRIGHT • Hermiston Herald

Morrow County Commissioner Jim Doherty is making the water pollution in his county a top priority.

“The nitrate issue in the Columbia Basin has always haunted me,” he said.

When he won election to the county board five years ago, he said he crafted a list of goals, and the nitrate problem was on the list.

“Shamefully that is where the ambition ended relative to the work,” he said. “But in this occupation, the best time to have done something was years ago, the next best time is now.”

When DEQ sent its notice about the whopping port fine of $1.3 million for nitrate pollution in the upstream aquifer, Doherty said that was a call of alarm he heard to his core.

Discussion and a meeting ensued almost immediately, he said, just as it had for the past 30 years.

“Was this regulatory overreach?” he recalled. “Who were the primary suspects? Would we come together to craft a message of solidarity?”

But Doherty said one voice was absent from that meeting.

“In my view, the greater community were the only ones not present then, nor at any time in the past,” he said, “and I surmised, potentially bearing the biggest burden — that of real and present health concerns.”

He then set out to test what residents were drinking from the end results at the kitchen faucets.

Tests results, residents deliver bleak picture

The top responsibility of the local public health authority and the board of commissioners, he said, is public happiness and health. His fellow commissioners gave the blessing for Doherty to spend some resources for 100 expedited, if cursory, tests. Commissioner Melissa Lindsay even partnered with Umatilla County Commissioner Dan Dorran on a bi-county effort to secure a more long-range effort.

“I wasted little time in reaching out to Ana Pineyro, our Public Health Emergency Preparedness coordinator, who has helped me in the past and shines most brightly as a community outreach liaison,” Doherty said.

Morrow County is approaching 50% Hispanic representation and as such, it is vital to have someone like Ana who can bridge that cross-cultural divide.”

They hit the streets with test sample kits in hand, knocking and walking.

“I was hopeful as the first small set of samples were sent off to Kuo Testing Labs in Umatilla,” he recalled.

The testing company reported it would email the results in the ensuing days, he said, so a call from the lab to his cellphone was a bit of a surprise. He said the lab technician explained Kuo Testing is duty bound to warn people to suspend using any water if test results show there is an extreme and immediate health concern.

“I sadly have received that dreaded call for every sample submitted,” Doherty said.

The maximum level for nitrates in water is 7 parts per million, he said, and shared the result of 25 samples. One sample was .33 ppm. The second lowest was 8.24. The highest of that lot was 51.22 ppm. The average was 30.77.

The majority of the homes tested had nitrate filters, he said, albeit not generally the more expensive ones that work, but instead the more disposable, more affordable variety.

More alarming, he said, is what the residents reported on a questionnaire asking if they had experienced any of a short list of nitrate-related health concerns.

“For a small sample, 70 tests to date, I was quite taken aback by the prevalence of persistent headaches, devastating cancers and failed pregnancies,” Doherty said. “This weighs incredibly heavy on my heart as I search my soul and wonder if I had only started earlier, could I have made a difference in these things.”

A hill worth dying on

Correlating responses to the question with the extremely high nitrate results is almost impossible. But Doherty said he thinks it is “abundantly fair to suggest that in those numbers, the responses we got could certainly be attributed to the increasing prevalence of high nitrates.”

Policy making is about assessing what issues to address and how serious they are, Doherty said. And in this case, he said, it’s about making a stand.

“This certainly is, ‘a hill I am willing to die on,’ Doherty said, “if only that my friends and neighbors don’t face that literal peril.”

Doherty also touched on environmental justice. He said the very people who provide the labor force for the region are the same people bearing the brunt of the nitrate problem, yet they have been “discarded” from the environmental discussions, and they must have a voice in this.

“This is the missing community,” Doherty said. “This is a barrier that we must eliminate.”