EQC Punts on DO Protections for Redband Trout

Last month, the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission (EQC) held a special meeting to consider the DRA’s Petition for Declaratory Ruling on inadequate dissolved oxygen levels in the lower Deschutes. Unfortunately, the EQC decided to not act on our petition and correct the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality’s (DEQ) continued violation of state water quality standards. The river’s redband trout will, as a result, face at least one more spawning season without their legally required protections.

Briefly, DRA’s petition sought to enforce the state’s dissolved oxygen (DO) standard on the lower Deschutes to protect spawning and incubating redband trout. Currently, DEQ deviates from legal requirements by “deeming” that no spawning or incubation takes place between June 15 and October 15 – a full third of the year. Our petition questioned this DEQ-deemed period, pointing to the law as currently written and to extensive scientific evidence of post-June 15 spawning and incubation in the lower Deschutes.

Unfortunately, our petition’s simple question – whether DEQ should be allowed to ignore the current DO standard – was never answered or even addressed. DEQ’s mischaracterizations of our question in its explanatory memo and its misleading presentation seemed like a clear attempt to confuse the EQC into misunderstanding our petition and the clear biological facts of the situation. Despite DRA’s efforts to clarify, our allotted 5-minutes could not overcome DEQ’s 40-minutes of seemingly intentional misrepresentation.

A video recording of the full meeting is available here: https://bit.ly/octhearing

Ultimately, the EQC voted to not formally hear our petition, deciding instead to delay action until water quality standards are updated. This updating process, which DEQ previously stated was already to have been completed by mid-2020, will likely take more than a year to finish – pushing the updates into 2023. EQC’s inaction ensures at least another year of biologically inadequate oxygen levels for spawning and incubating redband trout, with no guarantee that it won’t extend multiple more years.

The EQC did formally order DEQ to schedule a special informational meeting for public input on the lower Deschutes’ water quality issues before March 2022. Sadly, scheduling another meeting to discuss the clear lack of water quality enforcement is the best they could do. We will be preparing for this meeting carefully and looking for your support. 

Following the hearing, DRA sent letters to both the EQC and to DEQ that proposed an interim plan to protect redband trout until those standard updates are passed. At the time of publication, DEQ stated they were reviewing our letters. We will continue to push the EQC and DEQ to implement the reasonable interim standards we proposed, and will continue to fight for the redband trout and all fish that call the lower Deschutes home.