Gov. Tina Kotek and Environmental Protection Agency Region 10 Administrator Casey Sixkiller met Wednesday, April 24, with local leaders and organizers to hear what challenges they face in addressing the water nitrate pollution in Morrow and Umatilla counties.
“We’ve been trying to be partners with you from the state to work on the issues here in the community, and there’s been a lot going on,” Kotek told the community-based organizations in her opening remarks. “Not saying we have solved every problem, but our state agencies have been directed to work more closely with everyone. I think we’ve seen some success there.”
The meeting at the Boardman campus of Blue Mountain Community College came less than a week after state agency directors from the Department of Environmental Quality, Department of Agriculture and the Water Resources Department held a question-and-answer public meeting.
Kotek and Sixkiller spent an hour with community-based organizations and advocates and then about 30 minutes with city and county public officials working in planning, leadership and public health. U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley attended the first meeting via Zoom, with representatives in the room during both meetings. U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden also had a representative present. Afterward, Kotek and Sixkiller answered a few questions from media outlets.
The major theme during the meetings was the need to improve communication from county and state officials to the community organizations and broader public.
Community organizers also said they feel the partnership between them and the state needs to be better if the groups are to be true partners in the short, medium and long term efforts to address the contamination in the Lower Umatilla Basin Groundwater Management Area. The county leaders emphasized how important individualized solutions will be for each community within the area.
Need for better partnership
Kotek and Sixkiller visited the LUBGWMA in 2023, touring homes and hearing individual testimony about the harm associated with the contaminated drinking water. The April 24 roundtable meeting with Kotek and Sixkiller offered a chance to follow up with a few community-based organizations.
“We’re not here to say that the work is done. We’re not here to say that there isn’t more that we can do to move that work forward as expeditiously as possible,” Sixkiller told the leaders at the start of the meeting, as he reflected on the past year since his previous visit. “What we are here to say is we know we’re not going to be successful if we don’t do it in partnership, and so the knowledge that you bring, the networks that you have access to, it’s just mission critical to moving this work forward.”
Sixkiller and Kotek said from the state and federal perspective, the work of the past year, in particular, has allowed them to better understand the issues and be set up to work on the solutions.
Kotek asked for attendees’ blunt opinions the state of the situation and what they’re hearing from people they work with.
Representatives from Oregon Rural Action, Eastern Oregon Center for Independent Living, Doulas Latinas International, Morrow County Public Health, Euvalcree, the Hermiston Hispanic Advisory Committee and the Northwest Center for Alternatives to Pesticide all offered feedback to Kotek, Sixkiller and Merkley.
One of the things that is not going well, they said, is the way partnership is working between the state and their organizations.
“I think all we all want to see is just more action,” added Griselda Paredes, assistant director of public health support services with Eastern Oregon Center for Independent Living.
There doesn’t seem to be consistent engagement between their groups and the agencies in charge, she and other leaders said. They would like to see a better version of their partnership, one that is more inclusive and transparent.
“I will go back to my team and make sure we can continue to walk with you a lot cleaner and with more clarity because you deserve that,” Kotek told the community leaders. “And we’re never going to be perfect, but we can be better, and so we’ll keep working on that.
Despite Kotek and Sixkiller’s emphasis on their long-term commitment to this issue, not everyone in the room left feeling good about how it went.
“We’re glad that we can come together again after a year. Unfortunately, there haven’t been much changes since their last visit, so we continue to be frustrated,” said Zaira Sanchez, director of community organizing with Oregon Rural Action. “We were hoping to hear more answers, more of a plan, more concrete solutions to what’s next, and we didn’t necessarily hear that today.”
The governor said in a media interview after the meetings she heard the need for clearer benchmarks as part of the larger, more abstract plans to get people clean drinking water and eliminate the nitrate contaminants. If everyone knows what they’re trying to achieve, then it’s easier to attain and mark progress.
“We haven’t decided what those marks are. So we do need to do that,” she said. “So hopefully in the next, probably, 60 days, we can come back with that by talking with folks and just say, ‘Let’s start setting some more goals and move forward together.'”
How to move forward
Morrow and Umatilla counties had representatives present during the second meeting. Sixkiller told the officials he understood the challenges they are facing.
“We don’t want to go out and design a solution the community rejects,” he said. “That’s just lost time and lost taxpayer resources and opportunities.”
Instead, he said, time must be spent bridging the trust gap that exists and making sure decision makers and community members are working together.
Most of the discussion with public officials centered on the feasibility of expanding municipal water systems to communities that currently rely on the unsafe well water.
Morrow County Commissioner Roy Drago Jr. and Morrow County Planning Director Tamra Mabbott, said given enough funding, it’s possible, but would require a lot of buy-in from the residents of the affected neighborhoods. Right now, plenty of people chose to live where they do partly so they don’t have to pay into the city and be part of the city limits, which they would if they received city water.
Drago also said it would be important to customize the solution to the community. While it might work for a few people to dig deeper wells, that couldn’t be done everywhere. And although public water systems could be expanded to some areas, it’s likely that not everyone wants to be on city water.
The officials discussed when in the process would be the time to start engaging the community. They don’t have any answers to questions of cost or impact on individuals, and people could feel frustrated they don’t know the answers. But, if they wait, they might come up with a solution that the community doesn’t want and people may feel left out of the process.
Ana Piñeyro, public health access specialist with Morrow County Public Health, said a solution is not key to engaging with the public.
“We need to go and actually listen to the community,” she said. “Tell them, ‘We are in the same place. I don’t know. Let’s work together to find a solution.’ And that will mean that we are engaging with the community.”
Bridging the communication gap
Throughout both meetings, a common thread was the disconnect between the work at high levels — such as the state, or even counties — and what people believe is being done.
Many of the residents they work with can’t tell any progress has been made, leaders of the community-based organizations said. Hearing people are working on it doesn’t mean anything to them when they still can’t drink their water.
Kristin Anderson Ostrom, executive director of Oregon Rural Action, requested a written plan with measurable outcomes from the governor and her team.
“It was a listening session, but it’s time for an actual plan, an actual strategic plan and strategic deployment of the resources, including that real partnership with community based organizations,” she said after the meeting. “We don’t know how we’re making progress if we don’t have specific outcomes set forth and a timeline.”
Kotek didn’t have much of a chance to address that request during the meeting, but did discuss it during the media interview later on.
“I think it’s difficult for us to assess at this point what people are actually hearing, and we’re going to need a deeper relationship with those organizations,” she said. “That’s what I took away from that meeting.”
She emphasized the importance of bringing the community in early and frequently during her meeting with public officials, who also recognized the negative effects the communication and trust gap are having on the process of reaching solutions. Still, officials seemed to have a more positive outlook on their meeting with Kotek and Sixkiller than some of the community leaders.
Drago after the meeting said there’s positive movement but caution is a must.
“We can’t do solutions until we know what the right solution is, we don’t want to fix something and create a bigger problem,” he said. “That’s what happens when you get the cart ahead of the horse, so really, we’re just trying to do it right. We want to get it right, and every one of them is going to be different.”
