State agencies released a plan on Friday to protect residents in Morrow and Umatilla counties from contamination of their drinking water from wells from nitrates.

Nitrate contamination is basically poop in the water. The maximum contaminant level for nitrates in drinking water is 10 mg/L or 10 milligrams per liter. More than that can cause health problems. Babies can be particularly vulnerable. The source of the contamination can be wastewater from farmlands, livestock operations, and even faulty septic systems.

The clean up in Morrow and Umatilla will take decades. The state’s plan is to monitor contamination levels and the flow of new contaminants into groundwater is reduced.

The whole time we were looking at the state’s plan, tinyurl.com/Nitrateplan, and the excellent article from OPB about it, tinyurl.com/OPBnitrates, we couldn’t stop thinking about southern Deschutes County. That part of the county already has enough nitrate contamination in the ground to cause serious contamination of groundwater supplies.

Are the state and county doing enough in southern Deschutes County?