Where is DEQ?? Continued Poor Agency Management on the Lower Deschutes

In early July, DRA was shocked to learn that the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has been flying blind with water quality conditions in the lower Deschutes. A pair of DRA public record requests found PGE has failed to meet the most basic requirement of their license and DEQ is letting them do it. 

Under Pelton Round Butte’s operational requirements, water quality reports must be submitted to DEQ at least monthly, and more often if needed. As of this post, February was the last month where one of these reports was submitted to DEQ. 

This instance of oversight is emblematic of DEQ’s larger mismanagement of the lower Deschutes. Over more than the last two decades, DEQ:

• Failed to undertake any significant action to complete a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) plan for multiple water quality parameters since it was first needed in 1998,
• Allowed hundreds of days of water quality standard violations without repercussion,
• Failed to require changes to SWW Tower operations, despite the Tower clearly failing to “help the Project meet temperature and water quality goals” in the lower river,
• Illegally relaxed water quality requirements through a decades-worth of private agreements,
• Improperly removed spawning and incubation protections for the LDR’s redband trout,
• Failed to take any action to address the annual algal blooms in Lake Billy Chinook and the accompanying water quality issues, and finally,
• Is currently considering changes to the current Water Quality Management and Monitoring Plan – a plan whose specified water quality protections have never been achieved – that, if accepted, will further relax PGE’s water quality requirements in the LDR.

The duty to protect the lower Deschutes falls squarely on DEQ’s shoulders. This months-long gap in a basic, foundational monitoring requirement does not reassure the public that DEQ has been taking that role seriously, and placed in the large context of agency inaction over more than two decades, it is clear that DEQ must do better to protect our river. 

DRA inquired about this gap with DEQ, but has not received a response. To address this gap and lack of DEQ response, we submitted this letter to DEQ. We hope our letter spurs DEQ to take its statutory and trust duties serious and work to fully understand and protect the lower Deschutes. We will keep you updated on this ongoing situation.