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Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump breaks historic Columbia River deal between U.S. government, tribes, Northwest states
(Left) Powerlines above the Columbia River move electricity from the Bonneville Dam to customers across the region in Hood River County, Oregon, on Thursday, July 25, 2024. (Right) Portrait of Farley Eaglespeaker, a member of the Nez Perce Tribe, sitting atop a fishing scaffold along the Columbia River, in Cascade Locks, Oregon on Tuesday, July 23, 2024. (Jordan Gale/Oregon Capital Chronicle) This is a developing story and may be updated A 'historic' deal made two years ago between the U.S. government, four tribes, Northwest states and environmentalists to put legal battles aside and invest in restoring endangered Columbia River fish runs is now off. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a presidential memorandum withdrawing the U.S. government from a Dec. 14, 2023 agreement to help restore salmon, steelhead and other native fish being decimated by federal hydroelectric dams in the Columbia River Basin. He also revoked a September 2023 presidential memorandum signed by former President Joe Biden meant to send Northwest tribes $200 million over 20 years to reintroduce salmon in habitats blocked by dams in the upper Columbia River Basin, calling the commitments 'onerous,' 'misguided' and saying they placed 'concerns about climate change above the nation's interests in reliable energy resources.' The 2023 agreement was reached after decades of legal battles that pitted the federal government against four Lower Columbia River tribes and environmental groups backed by the states of Oregon and Washington. Groups behind the suits said they would forge on, and legal battles will likely reopen. 'This move by the Trump administration to throw away five years' worth of progress is shortsighted and reckless,' said Mitch Cutter, a salmon and energy strategist at the Idaho Conservation League, in a statement. 'The Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement was a landmark achievement between the federal government, states, Tribes and salmon advocates to find solutions for salmon and stay out of the courtroom. Now, it's gone thanks to the uninformed impulses of a disconnected administration that doesn't understand the Pacific Northwest and the rivers and fish that make our region special.' The Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon and the Nez Perce Tribe were part of the deal. In negotiations, the tribes, along with the states of Oregon and Washington, are referred to as the 'six sovereigns.' Gov. Tina Kotek's office did not respond to a request for comment by Thursday afternoon, nor did representatives from the four tribes. Groups representing utilities, farmers, ports and others who rely on Columbia River dams for power, moving goods and irrigation, celebrated the executive order. 'As demand for electricity surges across the nation, preserving access to always-available energy resources like hydropower is absolutely crucial,' said Jim Matheson, CEO of the trade group National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, in a news release. At the heart of the issue are four Snake River dams that provide irrigation and emissions-free hydropower for nearby communities, but have also contributed to the near extinction of 13 salmon and steelhead populations that return to the Columbia Basin from the Pacific Ocean to spawn. The fish are important to tribal health and sovereignty and to basin ecosystems, and the declines are hitting southern resident orcas off the coasts of British Columbia, Washington and Oregon that rely on salmon for food and that are federally listed as endangered. Environmental advocates, tribes and others have pushed to remove the four dams – Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose and Lower Granite on the Snake River between Kennewick, Wash., and Lewiston, Idaho – to help the fish, including filing lawsuits. Earthjustice, an environmental law group, has led litigation against five federal agencies, seeking changes to dam operations in the Columbia River Basin to help protect salmon. The 2023 agreement, coupled with Biden-era climate and clean energy funding, was meant to pour more than $1 billion in new federal investments for wild fish restoration into the Columbia River Basin over the next decade, along with clean energy projects on tribal lands. It also included potentially breaching the four Snake River Dams to restore natural flows that could revive native salmon populations. Earthjustice Attorney Amanda Goodin said in a statement that they would not give up fighting in court to prevent salmon extinction in the Columbia River Basin. 'The Trump administration is turning its back on an unprecedented opportunity to support a thriving Columbia Basin — and ignoring the extinction crisis facing our salmon,' she said. 'Unfortunately, this short-sighted decision to renege on this important agreement is just the latest in a series of anti-government and anti-science actions coming from the Trump administration.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Oregon bill would make landlords give back rent deposit or pay fee if home found defective
Sen. Deb Patterson, D-Salem, at the Oregon Legislature on Feb. 12, 2024. (Jordan Gale/Oregon Capital Chronicle) Oregon rental applicants who haven't yet signed a lease could soon get their security deposits back if they find the home they've applied to is defective. House Bill 3521, now headed to Gov. Tina Kotek's desk, would let Oregon renters get their security deposits back if the home they've applied to has mold, unsafe electrical wiring or other defects making it uninhabitable. The bill already passed the Oregon House in a 33-18 vote in April, and on Thursday it passed the Oregon Senate in a 20-8 vote. Under the bill, landlords would have five days to return deposits or face a fee equivalent to the deposit they charged. Landlords would not face penalties if natural disasters or emergencies keep them from complying, and they could still choose to return deposits at their place of business rather than through mail. Rep. Annessa Hartman, D-Gladstone, spearheaded the bill after hearing from renters across Oregon who lost hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars to hold deposits for homes they couldn't move into because of mold, broken plumbing or pest infestations. Renters in Oregon represent 51% of all low-income households, according to Oregon Housing and Community Services. And nearly 37% of Oregonians rent their homes, according to the U.S. Census. That's higher than the national average, and renters are in the majority in cities including Eugene, Corvallis, Monmouth, Beaverton and Seaside. 'Landlords can still enter into whole deposit agreements, collect deposits and keep them when applicants back out without a good reason,' Senate sponsor Deb Patterson, D-Salem, said on the floor. 'That doesn't change. What does change is that applicants will have the right to walk away if the unit is substantially uninhabitable.' No senator debated against the bill on Thursday. If enacted, the bill would apply to deposits received on or after Jan. 1, 2026. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Data centers and their neighbors
QTS Data Centers in Hillsboro on Oct. 11, 2024. (Rian Dundon/Oregon Capital Chronicle) Oregon has a big and (relatively) new kind of business it doesn't really know how to deal with. It should start soon to figure that out. This new sector consists of its mass of data centers, more of which are likely to pop up in coming years. But the state has no overall strategy for dealing with them. It should, because data centers, economically significant and technically important as they are, are a business unlike any other. Governments need a separate and specific set of policies to deal with them. One reason the state (like many others) has been behind the curve may be inadequate information about the sector, but more is becoming available. Organizations that track data centers aren't in agreement about exactly how many the state has: 131 according to Data Center Map, 84 according to The timing of their surveys could have affected the difference in numbers, but so could questions about how you count them. Data Center Map, for example, says that the largest grouping of centers in the state is at Boardman, with 30 centers listed. All, however, are Amazon AWX PDX, bunched in five different campuses. How many distinct units of these should be counted comes down to a matter of definition. Regardless of the exact numbers, Oregon clearly is among the state leaders for data centers. It has fewer than California and about the same as Arizona, but more than any other state west of Texas. About 2,500 data centers are estimated to exist in the United States, so Oregon's share is above average per capita. One attraction for the state is cheap hydropower: Most of the centers are located not far from the Columbia River. Oregon's moderate climate and relative safety from natural and human-caused disasters are pluses as well. For some purposes, data centers are classified as large industrial operations, which they are — but they're also distinctive from most businesses in that category. They not only use unusually large amounts of electricity but water as well, and they employ far fewer people than most industrial businesses usually do. The tracking site said 'Oregon, with its strategic geographical location, offers several advantages that make it an ideal choice for businesses looking to store their data. The state boasts a robust technology infrastructure, including reliable power supply and high-speed internet connectivity. Additionally, Oregon's temperate climate ensures optimal cooling conditions for data centers, reducing energy consumption and associated costs. These factors contribute to the overall efficiency and reliability of the colocation services available in the region.' Several private data companies dominate the service provision in Oregon: Lumen Colocation appears to be the largest. But Google has a large center in The Dalles, Amazon in Boardman, Hermiston and Umatilla, and both Meta (Facebook) and Apple have substantial operations in Prineville. Besides those well-known locations, Oregon has data centers in Portland, Eugene, Medford, Bend, Hillsboro, Corvallis, Baker City and Bandon. It's truly an industry with statewide reach. They are significant economic players, but they have been walled off from much of the rest of the state's economic and social picture in ways most businesses are not. Their impact on the state and on their neighbors in the areas of electric power, water use, and much more may become large, and it's not entirely predictable. How should we interact with them? What should we fairly expect of them? That's a broad debate begging for a legislative airing. The Oregon Citizens Utility Board, a consumer-oriented nonprofit, said that 'utility investments to serve data centers have been pushing up billing rates to residential, small business, and even other industrial customers. We've seen the dire impact of data centers' rapidly rising energy costs — in 2024, Oregon's for-profit utilities disconnected a record number of households because they could not afford their electricity bills.' The Oregon Legislature has taken note of this specific issue.. This year's House Bill 3546, sponsored by Reps. Pam Marsh, Mark Owens, and Dacia Grayber and Sens. Janeen Sollman and Jeff Golden, covers a narrow though significant segment of data center impact: Electric power rates. It passed the Senate on June 3 and the House cleared amendments from the other chamber on June 5, in both cases with generally Democratic support and Republican opposition. The bill goes to the governor next for final action. That bill raises sensible questions, but it should be the foot in the door to a broader discussion of how these centers should relate to the rest of us. Data centers should be put in a new category by themselves, for utility, regulatory and service purposes. Working through that effort should be a long-term project starting now. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Summer meals available for Oregon youth across nearly 700 sites
Kindergarteners at Durham Elementary School in Tigard eat a free lunch on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024. (Ben Botkin/Oregon Capital Chronicle) Oregon youth ages 1 to 18 can receive free summer meals at schools, libraries, parks and community centers as the Summer Food Service Program begins for the season. Nearly 700 sites across Oregon are participating in the summer meals program, and many have already begun serving a mix of breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. Some sites will begin serving meals later this month and continue into July or August. Roughly 1.43 million meals in Oregon were served in summer 2024, according to Oregon Department of Education spokesperson Peter Rudy. The program is mostly federally funded, but Oregon pays an additional five cents for every meal served, he said. Each site has designated meal times, with some offering a to-go option, games and reading activities. Meals are open to all families without paperwork, income verification and regardless of immigration status. To find a meal site, call 2-1-1 or go to the USDA's Summer Meals Site Finder. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Environment, social justice groups withdraw support for governor's key groundwater protection bill
Gov. Tina Kotek on May 3, 2023 at the home of Ana Maria Rodriguez, a Boardman resident and Oregon Rural Action organizer, whose well water has nearly four times the safe drinking water limit for nitrate. Kotek was visiting with residents in Boardman, who are concerned that progress on the nitrate pollution in the Lower Umatilla Basin has been slow. (Alex Baumhardt/Oregon Capital Chronicle) Groups that helped champion one of Gov. Tina Kotek's key groundwater protection bills this session are withdrawing their support and asking the Legislature to let it die for now, following a last-minute amendment they say effectively neutralizes the intent of the legislation. Senate Bill 1154 as first proposed in February would provide long overdue updates to the state's Groundwater Quality Protection Act first passed in 1989, giving state agencies more authority to coordinate and to intervene early in Oregon's contaminated groundwater areas. Since 1989, three critical groundwater management areas have been identified in Oregon. They are all still considered to be in critical condition due to nitrate contamination, almost entirely from agricultural fertilizers and animal manure, and none have seen vast improvement in the last two to three decades. Groups heavily involved in addressing water contamination issues in northeast Oregon — including the nonprofits Oregon Rural Action, Center for Food Safety, Food & Water Watch of Oregon, Columbia Riverkeeper, and Friends of Family Farmers — consulted with Kotek's environmental advisers on the bill and offered testimony supporting it in recent months. But in advance of a public hearing and vote on Monday in the Senate Committee on Rules, the groups released a statement saying they could no longer support it. They wrote that a proposed 39-page amendment posted late Friday at the request of state Sen. Kayse Jama, D-Portland and committee chair, 'revealed the extent to which the Governor's office had allowed powerful industrial lobbies to influence the bill late in the session.' Lawmakers have to wrap up voting on all bills by June 29. At a news conference Monday Kotek said she was not aware of the proposed amendment. 'I think the bill is in good shape, and I know some folks would like it to be stronger, but I think it significantly strengthens what we do in the state, and I support the bill in its current state,' she said. Several environmental and social justice groups that have supported the bill continue to do so with the amendment, according to Anca Matica, a Kotek spokesperson. They include the Portland-based nonprofit Verde, Oregon Environmental Council and Beyond Toxics. The amendment strikes earlier provisions in the bill that would have required state agencies to provide regular reports to the Environmental Quality Commission, the governor and the Legislature in order to receive funding to execute their local voluntary implementation plan. It also strikes part of the original bill that would have allowed the state to modify existing permits for wastewater reuse and confined animal feed operations if doing so could curb pollution. One big change the amendment brings to the original bill, according to Kaleb Lay, policy director at Oregon Rural Action, is eliminating the requirement that the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and the Oregon Water Resources Department work together to figure out whether new requests for groundwater permits, or requests for new uses of groundwater, might contribute to pollution. Representatives from the Oregon Farm Bureau and Water for Eastern Oregon, a nonprofit industry group representing northeast Oregon food processors and agricultural industries, said the amendment makes improvements to the bill, specifically ones that require third-party analysis of state hydrogeology and well-testing data. 'The bill has come a long way. And again, the problem is identified,' Oregon Farm Bureau Executive Director Greg Addington told lawmakers on the Senate Rules Committee. 'We want to avoid groundwater contamination. We can all understand that, and we can all get behind it.' Kristin Anderson Ostrom, executive director of Oregon Rural Action, said in the multi-group statement it would be better to abstain from voting on the bill now and to work on it for the next Legislative short session in 2026. 'Governor Kotek showed great initiative in putting this bill forward to learn the lessons of the LUBGWMA (Lower Umatilla Basin Groundwater Management Area) in eastern Oregon, but this legislation doesn't go far enough to put those lessons into practice,' she wrote. 'Polluters continue to get whatever they want, while the communities directly impacted by pollution are denied what they need and have been asking for – to enforce the law and stop the Pollution.' The Lower Umatilla Basin Groundwater Management Area, designated as critically impaired in 1990, has gotten worse under state supervision. A volunteer committee established in 1997 to tackle problems has had little to no impact. Thousands of residents in Morrow and Umatilla counties — mostly Latino and low-income — have been drinking from contaminated wells, which is dangerous because nitrates consumed over long periods can increase risks for cancer and birth defects. In September, Kotek and state agency officials released a comprehensive plan for curbing nitrate pollution in northeast Oregon that 'will take decades' to achieve. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
