Oregon Waters

Oregon Waters is PEAC's ambitious campaign to reinvigorate the 100,000 miles, 62,000 lakes, and 9 estuaries comprising Oregon state waters by targeting the lackadaisical state and federal regulations policing water quality standards under the Clean Water Act (CWA). Oregon Waters deploys a three-pronged approach consisting of cases and projects that (1) reduce toxicity, (2) maintain temperature, and (3) preserve the natural flow of state waters.

Currently, this initiative consists of cases that:

• Target the insufficient regulations that threaten all of Oregon’s waters based on the EPA’s erroneous approval of Oregon water temperature standards that critically jeopardize the critical habitat of salmon, steelhead and bull trout.

• Target industrial stormwater, the major source of water pollution in the state.

• Target suction dredge mining, by taking to task the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission for erroneously exempting deleterious discharges from suction dredge mining permit requirements and for failing to established effluent limitations in conformance with the Clean Water Act.

• Tackle the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for failing, for two years, to perform its mandatory duty of timely reviewing Oregon’s toxic pollutant water quality standards.