Oregon Zombie Discharge Permits Walk the Land
Installment 1 of 2 In Which Oregon is the Worst in the Nation
by Nina Bell • November 20, 2020 •
For many years, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) dealt with its desire to not regulate polluters by simply not issuing the required water pollution discharge permits. DEQ just ignored the Clean Water Act, which requires the permits to be reissued every five years in order to respond to new scientific information on pollution hazards and increasing pollution levels.
Issuing new permits meant that polluters would have to install new pollution controls and, for sure, Oregon DEQ didn’t want to burden businesses and cities with extra costs to protect our public waters.
So it didn’t.
But it’s our job to make them do their job so we took the state to court.
By the time NWEA sued Oregon DEQ over its “zombie permits,” the state was last in the nation for keeping its permits updated; with 148 permits ten or more years old and an additional 15 general permits (that cover many polluters) as well. Way to go Oregon!
We settled our lawsuit in late 2018 with an enforceable court order requiring DEQ to reissue all the permits that were over five years out-of-date over a 10-year period. Mind you, Oregon’s oldest permit is currently 29 years old. That’s a stunning 24 years out-of-date!
DEQ also committed to other deadlines, for example to reduce the overall permit backlog by the end of 10-years. Our court order also includes enforceable milestones for permits issued at two, four, six, eight, and ten years to keep the agency on track.
After the court issued its order, DEQ managed to get the Oregon Legislature to fund nine more permit writers. That’s a huge increase, particularly since the agency has never explained how its existing permit writers have not managed to turn out much in the way of permits for many years. What do they do all day? That’s what we wonder. And permittees wonder that too, particularly since they help fund the program.
The answer lies here: the mystery that is the Oregon DEQ is some combination of its keen political disinterest in doing its job and just your basic run-of-the-mill incompetence.
So, now that we have a court order forcing DEQ to issue water pollution discharge permits, the question is: how has DEQ performed since we signed the agreement?
Tune in to Installment 2 soon, but in the meantime, please don’t hold your breath that DEQ has been doing a great job.