An irrigation pivot sits in a crop of canola near Echo. About 85% of all the water diverted from rivers, streams and aquifers in Oregon is used for irrigated agriculture. (Kathy Aney/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek and her natural resources adviser Geoff Huntington consider water quality and availability a top priority this legislative session.
In separate interviews with the Capital Chronicle, they said they’re particularly focused on addressing overdrawn water basins and ongoing issues with groundwater contamination in eastern Oregon and other critical groundwater areas in the state. Kotek also discussed her expectations for wildfire funding strategies, and the growing need for the Legislature to address energy demand and the cost of powering data centers.
Kotek said proposed legislation to update some of the state’s water management laws is the product of “a long overdue conversation,” among the governor’s office and the state Legislature.
“I’m committed to making progress there,” she said.
Water quantity
In less than a century, Oregon water officials have allocated all surface water under their purview, overallocated groundwater in several basins and have no clear accounting of how much water is still available in others. In May, Kotek convened a group of prominent water attorneys in the state to present ideas to the Legislature for improving Oregon’s water policies, water rights laws and allocation rules.
Huntington said the governor’s office will back a package of bills that gives state agencies more statutory authority to manage water allocations and regulations in Oregon. Much of that is being sponsored by Rep. Ken Helm, D-Beaverton, and Rep. Mark Owens, R-Crane, who co-chair the House agriculture and water committee.
“We are currently managing the resource based on a structure from the 1800s and the early 1900s,” Huntington said of the state’s ground and surface waters. “We’ve been adjusting and tweaking and moving through a process of trying to accommodate and collaborate where we need it, when we need it, but I think we’ve run out of room.”
Kotek and Huntington are eyeing changes to Oregon’s Groundwater Quality Protection Act, which is meant to conserve groundwater resources and prevent contamination. Updates to the act could help the Oregon Water Resources Department Department improve its statewide data on water quantity and distribution in the 20 basins they oversee, and help the Department of Environmental Quality exert more authority over sources of pollution in critical groundwater management areas.
Water quality
Huntington said the Lower Umatilla Basin Groundwater Management Area in northeast Oregon – one of three deemed critically impaired by nitrate contamination from farm fertilizers, animal waste and food processors – is an example of one area where the state could do more to improve conditions if agencies had more authority.
The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality recently released a study showing the problem of groundwater nitrate contamination in Morrow and Umatilla counties is getting worse, OPB reported. Among the entities contributing to the contamination is the Port of Morrow, which was recently allowed in an emergency order from Kotek to violate its wastewater reuse permit and spread more nitrate contaminated water across more farm fields above the contaminated aquifer.
Huntington, who spoke to the Capital Chronicle before the emergency order from Kotek, said it was a “false premise” that the state is prioritizing the port’s operations at the expense of safe drinking water for eastern Oregonians.
“I’ve spent more time in Boardman, personally, than any other part of the state since I’ve been in the governor’s office, working with not just the port, not just the food processing and agricultural folks that are on the front end of the issue, but also with the CBOs (community-based organizations) and the impacted community,” Huntington said.
He said he is helping the Port of Morrow with its efforts to secure federal loans that will be used to finish building digesters that are supposed to remove nitrogen from the port’s wastewater.
There are so far no commensurate loans or grants being pursued by the governor’s office to pay for the infrastructure needed to connect homes relying on well water to a municipal water system. Kotek said her budget includes ongoing support to help get residents in need bottled water and water filters in Morrow and Umatilla counties and that she will continue to seek long-term solutions.
Wildfire funding
Kotek, who was forced in December to convene lawmakers for an emergency session to pay outstanding wildfire bills, has been following closely a committee appointed by the Legislature last year to come up with long-term wildfire funding solutions to present in the current session.
The group has shared several ideas, including increasing a lodging tax and sending the revenues to the state’s wildfire fund, and a one-time investment of the state’s $1.8 billion revenue surplus, known as the “kicker” tax rebate, into a fund where it would earn at least 5% interest per year. Kotek said she expects the group to present its best ideas for wildfire funding to the Legislature in the coming weeks.
“They have to be politically viable in that we can get them across the finish line,” she said.
None of the proposals include new funding from private investor-owned electric utilities, responsible for some of the most expensive wildfires in Oregon history. Lobbyists from those same companies have sought some protections from future wildfire liabilities in conversations with lawmakers in recent months. PacifiCorp, owner of Pacific Power – found responsible for the 2020 Labor Day fires in Oregon that killed nine people and destroyed 5,000 homes and structures – was denied liability caps for its subsidiary, Rocky Mountain Power, by the Idaho Public Utilities Commission earlier this year. PacifiCorp sought to limit future wildfire damages in Idaho to only actual damages, not punitive or other damages, such as damages for pain and suffering.
Kotek did not say whether PacifiCorp or other utilities were seeking the same limits in Oregon, but she expressed concern that if the state doesn’t limit wildfire liability for the utilities – both cooperatives and private-investor owned – they could continue to increase rates to cover future disaster losses.
“We have to hold our big investor-owned utilities accountable for safety, for compensating folks, but also being part of the solution, to make sure that they will help us avoid major incidents in the future and not put all of the burden on ratepayers,” she said.
PacifiCorp is still embroiled in lawsuits over the Labor Day fires and has been ordered to pay or agreed to pay hundreds of million dollars to victims. But the cases are not over, and thousands of survivors are awaiting settlements.
Kotek said she would not withhold signing into law bills that could grant some relief from strict wildfire liability to companies like PacifiCorp until survivors are paid.
“I am not a fan of linking the two,” she said. “They must compensate survivors, and we need to have a very important conversation about how we manage risk and liability in our utility system.”
Energy and data centers
Kotek said she and lawmakers this session are calling for more transparency from the Public Utilities Commission on ratemaking and recent electricity rate hikes that have led to residential customers shelling out 50% more for electricity today than five years ago. Data centers are behind the largest and fastest increases in demand, requiring many electric utilities to buy more, and more expensive energy and expand infrastructure to serve the data centers. Senate Bill 553, sponsored by Sen. Janeen Sollman, D-Hillsboro, would require the Oregon Department of Energy to study data centers and propose policies to protect Oregonians from steep rate hikes.
Hillsboro has approved and sited a large number of data centers, which now demand as much electricity as nearly every residential customer in all of Washington County combined, according to an analysis from the watchdog Citizens’ Utility Board.
“I think that we’re at a point in Oregon where we have to have a conversation about what kind of criteria we should have for local economic development as it relates to data centers,” Kotek said. “The impact of the growth of data centers is at such a point where you have impacts on regional water supply, load on the grid and all these other things that are really, really important. So I think we have to wrestle as a state — both legislators and in the executive branch – with what kind of criteria we should have going forward.”
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