Rogue River Court Victory

The City of Medford’s nutrient pollution of the Rogue River violates its discharge permit, a federal court has ruled in NWEA’s 2018 lawsuit challenging the discharge of treated sewage to the river.  The lawsuit claimed that Medford routinely discharges nutrient pollution (nitrogen and phosphorus) at excessively high concentrations, causing negative effects to the downstream aquatic ecosystem such as the growth of nuisance algae and aquatic weeds and a decline in the macroinvertebrate community—the bugs that make up the bottom of the food chain.

The case started in 2013 when the Rogue Fly Fishers commissioned a report on the algae and weeds downstream of the Medford discharge.  The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) subsequently did its own report, as did Medford, both of which confirmed the earlier science but neither Medford nor the Oregon DEQ took any action to stop the pollution.  This inaction led to our lawsuit.