I saw the article over in the Bend Bulletin the other day about a meeting the DEQ* was to hold in Central Oregon on February 4th, 2010. The headline read: DEQ to form committee for exploring nitrate issue and solutions. How classic. Like so many other actions to improve our society, here is a water protection effort that seems destined to die in committee.
What I thought was particularly interesting about the article was the timeline that the Bulletin provided for what has happened already in the region. Nitrates in groundwater are found first in a concentrated area in 1982 and then elsewhere in 1994. I had to look at that twice and make sure I had my reading glasses on because I was dumbfounded. That's a total of 28, yes, twenty-eight, years. The DEQ has documented increasing levels of groundwater contamination in a large (125 square mile area according to the article) area over nearly three decades and they are going to form a committee!?!?
This is an area where one in ten of the wells sampled by the US Geological Survey shows signs of contamination? Pick your favorite comedian and just imagine what they could do with material like this.
The sad ending to the article is the series of people saying that it's good to take time to do these things right, that there's no emergency. No, there is no emergency. It is obviously too late to save the groundwater, the time for preventing pollution is obviously passed. I must refer to an earlier post where I talked about delusional people. This is a region's drinking water supply and yet the environmental protection agency for the state of Oregon is allowing protection actions to be waylaid by rhetoric.
Three decades is an awfully long time to consider what to do about a groundwater contamination problem. And to initiate a committee at the end of the three decades to decide what to do next is a pitiful excuse for environmental protection from our state environmental protection agency.
The thorn is in Oregon DEQ's side for failure to act in accordance with it's own rules. Duh.
*note the big red blob almost in the middle of the state on the map on this site, this is the region they're talking about in this case.
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It does seem like a long time, but a committee sure beats another spaghetti dinner fundraiser.
ReplyDeletehuh? what spaghetti dinner? Is there a juicy story?
ReplyDeleteWhen the USGS and EPA came out with their report, the folks in LaPine sponsored a spaghetti dinner to raise funds for a peer review of the USGS/EPA report. While the USGS/EPA indicated that the study had undergone a *peer review* when a paper from the study was published in the Journal of Hydrology (or some other technical journal - I don't remember the exact title), the *peer review* process fell on deaf ears from the folks living in the area. *Peer review* means many different things - to the general public, it sounds like you had your *friends* review the paper. You know your project is in trouble when a spaghetti dinner is sold.
ReplyDeleteHmmm...I wonder how much can be made at a spaghetti dinner in a small community like LaPine? Thanks for the story - perceptions, misunderstanding and delusion - sounds like the title for another blog...
ReplyDelete