Gov. Tina Kotek should appoint a special-counsel type official with broad powers to oversee the ongoing, and seemingly stalled, effort to deal with the contaminated groundwater issue in the Lower Umatilla Basin.

Recently, a liaison hired by the National Policy Consensus Center, Jane Hill, delivered an evaluation of the effectiveness of the work done by the Lower Umatilla Basin Groundwater Management Area Committee on the nitrate contamination issue.

One of Hill’s themes was that the committee should improve communications with the public on the issue. Yet accomplishing that goal is made complicated because nitrates in the groundwater derive from different sources and the nitrate challenge crisscrosses many different regulators and agencies.

Hill also indicated the problem requires solutions at various levels.

“Everything you have to work with here is fragmented,” she said in her presentation to the committee.

Hill was hired by the National Policy Consensus Center in January to be a liaison and help with coordination between different agencies on the problem. Hill explained the oversight process was muddled.

Hill suggested the committee work to ensure it communicates its nitrate reduction plan to the public and its focus should be on the delivery of clean water.

Hill’s suggestions are surely helpful, and we hope those proposals are not ignored.

Yet the state’s response to the contamination issue has been sluggish and disjointed. Hill is correct that the problem stretches across different agencies and regulators and there is the problem. A single unifying individual should oversee the effort, a person who has the authority to cut through what is clearly mountains of bureaucracy and get the problem solved.

Most voters will understand that the nitrate issue in counties far from Salem probably doesn’t rise to the crisis level at the capital, but it should.

To put it into perspective, local people in a state in the United States of America can’t drink their water because it is unsafe. For a great nation and state such as Oregon to be unable to address and solve this issue in a prompt manner is nearly disgraceful.

The governor should act promptly, appoint a special counsel-type, temporary office and then set a deadline regarding when the problem needs to be resolved.