Oregon

Oregon’s Drinking Water Is at Risk From Clearcutting

Published

12 months ago

November 30, 2023

The Oregon Coast Range is a 200-mile-long sliver of low-elevation mountains that runs along nearly two-thirds of the state’s latitude. It is one of the wettest regions in the state, receiving 80 or more inches of precipitation a year. This heavy rainfall, coupled with the region’s mild oceanic climate, makes its forests highly productive and extremely profitable. Yet regardless of how much water the area receives, this pursuit of profit has degraded the quality of drinking water, according to local residents and environmentalists.

The forests that blanket the foothills of the Cascades are crucial to holding onto freshwater and keeping it drinkable. But for years, local residents have suspected that clearcutting by private logging companies in the area has endangered their precious freshwater resource. Now, a new joint report from NASA and Oregon-based nonprofit Oregon Wild confirms coastal residents’ observations and echoes their concerns.

The report found “widespread” logging throughout the Oregon Coast Range, concluding that “conventional logging practices pose a risk of contamination to surface water quality.”

The report’s authors arrived at this conclusion by analyzing over two decades of satellite imagery of forested land in 80 Oregon Coast watersheds connected to municipal drinking water sources. The analysis determined that from 2000 to 2022, a total of 31 percent of the land area in the study’s 80 “drinking watersheds” had been impacted by logging. The vast majority of this logging involved clearcutting on private lands. In total, 26 percent of the report’s watersheds had been clearcut. This adds up to about 585 square miles of leveled forests in Oregon’s Coast Range.

“I think people sometimes forget how much clearcut logging we actually do in Oregon,” said Erik Fernandez, wilderness program manager for Oregon Wild.

According to Fernandez, coastal watersheds are uniquely vulnerable to water-quality issues, even when they receive sufficient precipitation. Coastal watersheds are also often small and frequently cut off from larger sources of water.

“From a watershed perspective, the [Oregon] Coast Range is different. The watersheds for towns often start just above town and then flow into the ocean,” Fernandez said. “When you clearcut, you get these big exposed mountainsides. And when rain comes, a lot of that soil ends up going down into the creeks and into someone’s drinking water.”

The problem of washed-out soil ending up in drinking water is called “turbidity” by regulators and scientists. This murky mix typically carries higher levels of disease-causing micro-organisms. It’s worth noting, however, that the NASA/Oregon Wild report only suggests that clearcutting poses a risk to drinking water quality. The report does not show a clear connection between turbidity and logging in the watersheds it examined. But not because it tried and failed. It just didn’t look for one. Joseph Spruce, a research scientist and independent consultant, acted as the report’s science adviser for NASA. He says project participants had initially discussed investigating what impacts logging might have on drinking water quality, but this proved unfeasible given time and budget constraints.

“I think there is additional work to be done on water quality,” Spruce said, adding that an additional satellite analysis could be performed in the future to examine turbidity and erosion issues.

Spruce added that the nature of the program limited the amount of time available for a larger analysis. Although the NASA/Oregon Wild report didn’t look for a connection between logging and water-quality issues, it didn’t really need to. The State of Oregon has been tracking the issue for decades and already knows what watersheds are problematic. One of those watersheds is Jetty Creek, which supplies water to the town of Rockaway Beach. From 2000 to 2022, 78 percent of Rockaway Beach’s watershed was logged, according to the NASA/Oregon Wild report, making it the most heavily logged watershed observed. Unsurprisingly, Rockaway Beach has also had numerous well-documented water-quality issues since logging began two decades ago, according to Oregon state government reports.

The most recent official report to highlight Rockaway Beach’s water woes is an Oregon Secretary of State Audits Division report issued earlier this year. Citing previous state reports, the Audits Division report notes that from 2005 to 2014, Rockaway Water and Sewer, the city’s sole water supplier, issued 19 alerts to its water customers. The report also noted that Rockaway Beach residents received multiple notices that their drinking water had exceeded Environmental Protection Agency limits for trihalomethanes. These are formed when chlorine used to disinfect turbid drinking water reacts with naturally occurring organic compounds found in the water. Research has linked long-term exposure to trihalomethanes to various forms of cancer, including brain, colon, and bladder cancers. Rockaway Water and Sewer spent millions to upgrade the filtration system on its water-treatment plant to deal with high turbidity issues.

None of this is surprising to Rockaway resident Nancy Webster, who started the North Coast Communities for Watershed Protection. Webster began compiling information on the Jetty Creek Watershed following an encounter she had with a logger while hiking though a clearcut site in the foothills overlooking her home. “The logger said, ‘Lady, this your drinking water source. This type of logging is not good for it,’” Webster remembered.

Webster said that Jetty Creek, which flows through the watershed before reaching the ocean, has often visibly suffered from turbidity issues following logging. “I’ve seen Jetty Creek run the color of chocolate milk at times,” Webster said.

The NASA/Oregon Wild report highlights what is a much larger problem with water quality nationwide, according to Nina Bell, executive director of the nonprofit environmental law firm Northwest Environmental Advocates.

“Americans in general are very concerned about water quality, and I think if they had any idea how poor the protections really are, they would be very unhappy with the lack of action and the expensive use of federal and state tax dollars,” Bell said. Communities that experience logging in their watersheds don’t have a lot of legal ground to stand on if they attempt to sue using the Clean Water Act if their towns’ watersheds are privately owned, she added.

This is why organizations like hers have focused on suing state and federal agencies for failing to enforce the Clean Water Act. And while she has had some success, in her own experience the State of Oregon has failed to meet its Clean Water Act obligations. In fact, following a lawsuit brought by Bell and her organization, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality has been penalized by the federal government for failing to meet water-quality standards under the Clean Water Act due to current logging practices in the state. The lawsuit has resulted in the state being denied nearly $11 million in federal funding from 2015 to 2023 due to violations, according to documents provided by Bell.

“The State of Oregon, meaning all the different agencies, have addressed the impacts of pollution on drinking water with the same distain as they have addressed those impacts on water quality in general,” Bell said.

Mike Broili, chair of the Officers Board of the MidCoast Watersheds Council, also thinks a huge part of the problem is the private ownership of watersheds. “When the forest within a community’s watershed is owned by an outside entity, which is the case in many of our watersheds, these entities can just decide that they’re going to log, and the community has little to no say in it,” Broili said.

The MidCoast Watersheds Council oversees ecological restoration efforts aimed to benefit both salmon and people in six coastal waterways along Oregon’s central coast. NASA’s analysis confirms Broili’s concerns. The NASA/Oregon Wild report found that clearcutting was far more common on private land than state or federal land. What’s more, the report continues, most of the cutting was on large lots owned by outside companies. Logging on locally owned and tribally owned land accounted for just 2 and 0.2 percent, respectively.

This is why Broili, Webster, and Fernandez are trying a new strategy. They think Oregon’s coastal communities should own their watersheds, and they’re hoping to get Oregon lawmakers involved. Fernandez said Oregon Wild plans to use its joint report with NASA and the data associated with it to make the case that Oregon needs new legislation that could help fund community efforts to buy drinking watersheds. Though this legislation could take a while to develop and pass.

Webster said Rockaway Beach is considering buying the Jetty Creek Watershed from the company that currently owns it. She also supports new legislation that could make this buying process easier for communities like hers and has plans to be a part of the lawmaking effort. Through her group and others like it, she hopes to build a larger network of concerned residents that could build momentum for the effort.

“You can feel pretty powerless,” Webster said. “So, what we are trying to do is connect with other small watersheds like ours.”

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Oregon

Oregon to reinstate ambitious climate program amid divided reactions from industries, environmentalists

Published

7 hours ago

November 22, 2024

Press Room

Oregon to reinstate ambitious climate program amid divided reactions from industries, environmentalists

Oregon’s ambitious carbon emissions reduction program is restarting once again.

The program is set to start for a second time in January — after a court of appeals invalidated the state’s first attempt at the Climate Protection Program late last year.

Most industries the program regulates are not happy with the new rules, while environmental organizations celebrated the reinstatement of the program, saying Oregon is now back on track to reduce emissions from the state’s largest polluters.

On Thursday, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality’s commission voted to unanimously adopt a revamped version of the Climate Protection Program. The program’s main goal is to reduce 90% of carbon emissions from diesel, gasoline and natural gas companies by 2050. The first benchmark regulated entities must comply with is a 50% carbon emission reduction by 2035.

“Oregon is committed to acting boldly and consistently to do our part to protect our climate,” Gov. Tina Kotek said in a press statement. “The Climate Protection Program will keep polluters accountable and fund community investments that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Oregon.”

FILE – Thousands of area youth climate activists and supporters marched through downtown Portland, Ore., May 20, 2022, as part of a youth-led climate mobilization demanding city leaders take meaningful action on climate change.

Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB

DEQ’s Climate Protection Program is one of the strongest emission reduction programs in the nation. Agency staff have touted the program as “foundational” in helping other state mandates, like electric utilities having net-neutral carbon emissions by 2040, “pick up the slack” to help reduce the state’s overall greenhouse gas emissions.

But the idea of a cap-and-trade program, like the CPP introduces, has been a controversial issue in the state for many years. Republican lawmakers shut down the Oregon Legislature two years in a row to stop majority Democrats from passing a cap-and-trade bill.

An earlier version of the program was also criticized, as fossil fuel groups regulated under the program sued to block it entirely in early 2022. The Oregon Court of Appeals invalidated the program last December, citing procedural technicalities.

Now, the program, which was updated after undergoing a second rulemaking process, is set to start once again in January, with a few changes.

Those include regulating heavy carbon emitters and direct natural gas users, working with the Oregon Public Utility Commission to monitor natural gas rates and adjusting compliance periods to give companies more flexibility.

“This program maintains Oregon’s commitment to addressing climate change, transitioning our economy to remain globally competitive, and investing in our most impacted communities across the entire state,” DEQ’s Environmental Quality Commissioner Chair Matt Donegan said in a statement.

Regulated entities will have three years, starting in 2025, to make adjustments to be in compliance with the new rules. After that, the compliance periods will be two years.

Hitting restart

After DEQ decided not to appeal the court decision that invalidated the program, the agency began a second rulemaking process in March. DEQ fast-tracked the process using the same framework that led to its previous rules. It took more than 20 months to develop the first attempt at a Climate Protection Program, which gathered more than 7,000 public comments and was guided by an advisory committee.

This time around, the agency received more than 10,000 public comments, the most the agency has ever received during any public comment period. That input, and a 26-member advisory committee, helped shape the new rules.

Oregon drafts a reboot of the state’s flagship climate program

But not everyone is happy with the result.

Bill Gaines, executive director of the Alliance of Western Energy Consumers, said there were meaningful discussions about the proposed changes to the program, but there needs to be more protections for consumers as well as businesses that compete regionally and globally.

In comments submitted to the agency from the group in late September, the AWEC wrote, “maintaining a vibrant, growth-oriented economy is not mutually exclusive with the policy of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The proposed CPP rules, however, will produce major, negative impacts on natural gas consumers, with the greatest impacts on the high-volume gas consumers that are the cornerstone of the State’s economic vitality.”

A blue flame burns on a natural gas stove.
*Cassandra Profita / OPB*

Gaines said although there was an improvement in the final draft rules for the recently added Energy Intensive Trade Exposed members, the new rules will be costly for Oregon’s natural gas customers. AWEC estimates companies that would be regulated under the new rules would have to pay millions of dollars to comply with the program to keep using natural gas at current rates. That could lead some businesses to leave Oregon, he said.

Gaines also said the group is still questioning whether DEQ has the authority to implement the program.

DEQ has said the agency has full authority to establish and enforce the program

Other regulated companies like NW Natural say it appreciates changes to delay program elements for a small percentage of their customers.

NW Natural was one of the fossil fuel companies that sued to halt the program in 2022.

But Spokesperson David Roy said “the overall negative cost impacts to Oregonians remain, as do our concerns about the accountability for this program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Roy was referring to the Community Climate Investment carbon credit program. If regulated entities choose to not lower their emissions, they can buy credits at the cost of $129 per ton of greenhouse gas pollution.

DEQ to start over with Climate Protection Program after Oregon Court of Appeals decision

Under the new rules, DEQ will work with the Oregon Public Utility Commission to evaluate and mitigate significant rate increases many natural gas customers may see due to compliance costs.

Roy said higher carbon credit costs could still impact their customers like hospitals and schools, because they “are still stuck with the most expensive cost of carbon of any program in North America.”

But not all regulated entities are unhappy with the second version of the rules.

Mike Freese with the Oregon Fuels Association said the adjustments made to the final rules governing the transportation industry are workable.

“Oregon’s local fuel sector was critical in lowering greenhouse gas emissions below the aggressive greenhouse gas reduction goals under the prior CPP program,” he said. “We appreciate DEQ recognizing these investments in the rule to help ease impacts on consumers. While the recently adopted CPP rule is an improvement, lawmakers need to carefully monitor this program to ensure Oregonians have access to affordable fuel in all parts of the state.”

During the first two years of compliance under the first version of the Climate Protection Program, the regulated industries reported a reduction in their emissions beyond what was required under the program.

As DEQ underwent the second rulemaking process, the agency said that some industries, like fuels suppliers, were reducing their emissions to beyond what was required to meet the cap with the previous rule. So DEQ is granting those companies additional carbon credits that represent what they would have banked under the first version of the program.

‘Beacon of hope’

The reinstatement of the program puts Oregon back on track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and invest in communities hit the hardest by climate change, a coalition of environmental groups said.

“Oregon’s actions today are a beacon of hope,” Oregon Environmental Council executive director Jana Gastellum said in a statement. “Every state deserves a program like the Climate Protection Program to not only cut pollution but also generate funds for community projects and business innovation. It’s a win for the people, especially those in frontline communities who’ve long been impacted by climate change.”

Oregon Court of Appeals finds state carbon reduction rules invalid

The Community Climate Investment credits would go toward projects like creating more renewable energy and retrofitting and weatherizing buildings, which would reduce carbon emission within the state’s most vulnerable communities. The program’s aim is to reduce air pollution and improve public health and help communities transition from fossil fuels to cleaner energy.

DEQ has refined what type of projects will be eligible, and the new rules ensure 15% of the funds received will benefit tribal communities in Oregon.

“This holds polluters accountable while uplifting community-led solutions,” Xitlali Torres, air quality and climate program coordinator at nonprofit environmental group Verde, said in a statement. “It directly addresses the harmful pollution that burdens low-income communities of color while building cleaner air, safer homes, and a livable future for all.”

But the implementation of the Community Climate Investment program, which was almost ready to launch when the first version of the Climate Protection Program was ruled invalid, will be delayed under the plan approved Thursday.

DEQ will restart the process of selecting an entity to implement the program and expects the program to be in place by the end of 2026.

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Oregon

Who was the 2024 Transfer of the Year in Oregon high school football?

Published

16 hours ago

November 21, 2024

Press Room

Who was the 2024 Transfer of the Year in Oregon high school football?

Dozens of Oregon high school football players transferred from one school to another during the 2023-24 offseason. SBLive Oregon combed through those transfers and selected 16 of the best to highlight. Vote for your top choice in the poll at the bottom of the page.

Earlier: Is transfer culture ruining high school football? Oregon coaches weigh in

Aguilar dominated at the 4A level for Milwaukie last season, and that performance translated to the 6A Mt. Hood Conference, where Aguilar was voted to the all-conference second team.

Ayers moved north from Roseburg and led the resurgent Wolverines with 1,074 rushing yards and 13 touchdowns on 173 carries.

The transfer from Springfield had a major impact on the Lancers’ Midwestern League title march, winning league defensive player of the year honors and earning second-team all-league honors as a backup tailback.

Buzzard was a two-time wrestling state champion and top linebacker for Harrisburg. He made an instant impact with the Spartans, leading them with 85 tackles and making the all-Oregon West Conference first team.

Brasfield moved across town from Corvallis and teamed with freshman quarterback Zeke Thomas as one of the most potent passing combos in the state, catching 90 passes for 1,335 yards and 19 touchdowns.

The ex-Crescent Valley standout helped lead the Titans to the 6A playoffs, earning first-team all-South Central Football Conference honors.

Craigwell came from Sunset and was a first-team all-Three Rivers League inside linebacker (34 tackles, three for loss) for the league champions.

The University of Oregon commit was as good as advertised coming to the Willamette Valley from the Arizona desert, leading the team in tackles for loss.

Eddleman joined older brother Treyson in coming from Sherwood and shined during his first season with the Pacers, recording a team-best 62 tackles and two sacks and making the all-Three Rivers League first team.

Hoffert arrived from Central Catholic and was one of the top players on the Generals defense, making the all-PIL first team.

Ingle returned to the Lions after spending his junior season at Wilsonville and fit right back in on defense, making the all-Three Rivers League first team with 40 tackles (five for loss) and a team-high three sacks. He rushed for six touchdowns.

Kurland arrived from Sunset and quickly took over the starting job, throwing for 1,143 yards and 11 touchdowns with one interception and completing 67.6% of his passes (71 of 105). He led the Lakers to the No. 1 seed in the 6A Open playoffs and was voted to the all-Three Rivers League second team.

Martin joined the program after starring at Gaston last year and has shined in all three phases (1,417 all-purpose yards, 17 touchdowns, 24 tackles, four interceptions).

Martirano was a 6A all-state selection at West Salem, and after winning Mid-Willamette Conference offensive player of the year honors (2,150 passing yards, 18 touchdowns; 417 rushing yards, 14 touchdowns), he’ll likely make the 5A all-state team this fall.

The late arrival from Riverside County in California quickly melded with his teammates, showing why he’s a rising prospect and finishing with 1,503 passing yards and 15 touchdowns.

Smith was already well-known as a standout receiver at Central Catholic, but with the Timberwolves, he became a two-way all-Three Rivers League first-team selection, catching 33 passes for 609 yards and seven touchdowns and making 22 tackles at safety.

To get live updates on your phone — as well as follow your favorite teams and top games — you can download the SBLive Sports app: Download iPhone App | Download Android App

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Oregon

High wind watch issued for Oregon for Friday

Published

23 hours ago

November 21, 2024

Press Room

High wind watch issued for Oregon for Friday

On Thursday at 3:35 a.m. a high wind watch was issued by the National Weather Service valid for Friday between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. for Clatsop County Coast, Tillamook County Coast and Central Coast of Oregon.

The weather service describes, “South winds 25 to 35 mph with gusts up to 60 mph possible for beaches and headlands.”

“Damaging winds could blow down trees and power lines. Travel could be difficult, especially for high profile vehicles,” explains the weather service.

Advance Local Weather Alerts is a service provided by United Robots, which uses machine learning to compile the latest data from the National Weather Service.

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