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Medford Fact Sheet June 2020

Medford Fact Sheet regarding the City's report and status.

Background & History
2011 Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) issues NPDES discharge permit to City of Medford without effluent limits on nutrient pollution (nitrogen and phosphorus) or requirements to study Medford’s effect on downstream water quality. Permit does prohibit the discharge from violating state water quality standards.

2012- 2013 Local river users observe and report poor water quality conditions in the Rogue River downstream from the Medford facility, including a foamy, discolored effluent and proliferation of nuisance algae and aquatic weeds. Rogue Fly Fishers & Federation of Fly Fishers commission study by Richard E. Hafele (retired aquatic biologist at Oregon DEQ), Medford Regional Water Reclamation Facility Outfall Assessment Study (Jan.2013), that finds the Medford plant is causing aquatic degradation and is contributing to violations of Oregon’s biocriteria water quality standard downstream of the discharge...

Highlights of NWEA Expert Panel Report
• Nutrient contamination from the Medford facility has repeatedly been identified as the source of the noxious benthic algal and submersed aquatic vegetation (SAV) overgrowth downstream.
• Excessive nutrient pollution is also causing unhealthy diel (24-hour) dissolved oxygen variation.
• Stillwater Sciences’ suggested permit limits are inadequate, and will not decrease the major growth of the noxious macroalga Cladophora, a renowned responder to sewage that Medford’s
discharge has made dominant in the Rogue River...

DEQ Response
Materials obtained through a Public Records Act request show DEQ staff clearly concluding in 2020 that nutrient pollution is the “stressor” causing the problems found downstream of Medford’s discharge:
• “The biological signatures evident in each study show classic and unmistakable nutrient enrichment responses, at multiple community levels[.]”
• “[Previous reports] showed nutrient concentrations downstream of and for a distance of at least 2 miles below the outfall to be substantially higher than the upstream background nutrient concentrations.”Download the Fact Sheet for complete details.

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