Lamb Weston latest to settle in NE Oregon groundwater pollution case, will pay $25M

Potato products giant Lamb Weston is the latest defendant in a class action lawsuit over contaminated groundwater to settle with residents of Morrow County in northeast Oregon in exchange for no admission of guilt in the pollution.

The corporation, famous for frozen fries, tots and other products will pay $25 million to settle in Pearson v. Port of Morrow, a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in February 2024 by several Morrow County residents who cannot drink their nitrate-contaminated water.

Lamb Weston is one of 17 total defendants, including 10 previously unnamed ones. Officials for the company did not immediately respond to the Capital Chronicle’s request for comment on Thursday morning.

Tech giant Amazon settled for $20.5 million in March and Madison Ranches, with more than 20,000 acres of onions, hay and row crops across Morrow and Umatilla counties, settled in August for $6.2 million, also in exchange for no admission of guilt.

That brings the total sum of settlement dollars — which will mostly go to a fund to help residents dependent on private wells for drinking water to install water filtration systems, dig deeper wells or help pay water bills if they choose to connect to city water systems — to more than $42 million.

The nitrate pollution is in part a byproduct of fertilizer-laden wastewater collected from industrial food processors and data centers at the port that is then sent out to area farms to be spread across fields.

A Capital Chronicle investigation found that for years the port publicly touted this as a waste-water reuse program, but as it collected larger and larger amounts of polluted water from its industrial customers, it became more of a dumping scheme as officials opted to spread it on fields in winter that could not fully absorb it, rather than paying for adequate cleaning and storing systems.

Many of those who rely on wells in the affected areas of Morrow and Umatilla counties are low-income and Latino. Overexposure to nitrates over time is harmful to infants and can lead to cancer and thyroid disease in people of all ages.

The bulk of groundwater nitrate pollution in the counties is from irrigated farms and livestock farms, according to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. Farm pollution is not regulated because farmers were exempted from the federal Clean Water Act in 1977.

The plaintiffs — Michael Pearson, Michael and Virginia Brandt, and James and Silvia Suter — are also suing Threemile Canyon Farms, Beef Northwest, Portland General Electric and Columbia River Processing. In June U.S. District Judge Michael Simon granted class action status in the case to all affected residents in Morrow and Umatilla counties who own or rent their homes, and scheduled a three-week jury trial slated to begin May 3, 2027.

He found that because the pollution is alleged to have damaged an entire water table, not just well water, and because the water table is a shared public resource, all who depend on it could be eligible for relief from a ruling on the case.

Pearson, one of the plaintiffs, told Gov. Tina Kotek at a 2023 community meeting in Boardman that he had been drinking his well water for 30 years, unaware until 2022, when the nonprofit Oregon Rural Action helped him test his well, that it contained more than four times the safe limit of nitrates set by federal authorities.

“When we bought the place, they didn’t say a darn thing about nitrate,” he told Kotek.

The Suters, also plaintiffs in the case, tested their well water to discover it had nearly four times the EPA’s safe limit for nitrate, and that it was nearly five times higher than it was in 1999 when they bought their home and had the water tested, according to the lawsuit.

When they researched options for getting clean water, they learned they’d need to drill a new well at least 300 feet down to hit water less likely to be contaminated with nitrate, at a cost of $24,000, according to the complaint.

The plaintiffs are being represented by Steve Berman of Seattle-based law firm Hagens Berman.

“We appreciate Lamb Weston’s commitment to the community reflected in this settlement,” Berman said in a statement. “Our work, however, is not over, and we will continue working with the remaining defendants.”

The settlement money will also be used to reimburse lawyers for their expenses and fees. Typically courts award 25% to 30% of such settlements to the lawyers, Berman previously told the Capital Chronicle.