Tech giant Amazon will pay $20.5 million to settle with northeast Oregonians living with contaminated groundwater in exchange for no admission of guilt in the polluting.

Amazon is one of 17 total defendants, including 10 previously unnamed ones, 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. The 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.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the case announced the settlement Tuesday in a news release.

The port’s wastewater, which a Capital Chronicle investigation found was overapplied in the winter for years, allowed excess nitrate to seep into groundwater that well-users in the area depend on. 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 nitrate-loaded wastewater also ends up at Amazon’s data center facilities at the port, where the water is used to cool computer servers running 24/7. The water heats up and condenses as it cools the computers, further elevating the concentration of nitrate it holds before also being end-use applied to area farm fields.

Kylee Yonas, an Amazon spokesperson, denied allegations in the lawsuit that the company has contributed to the groundwater contamination.

“Communities in Eastern Oregon have faced groundwater quality issues for decades — long before we opened our data centers,” she said in a statement. Company officials chose to settle early with the plaintiffs to avoid a lengthy legal battle and to “focus our time and resources on supporting the community rather than on litigation,” she said.

The plaintiffs — Michael Pearson, Michael and Virginia Brandt, and James and Silvia Suter — are also suing Lamb Weston, Madison Ranches, Threemile Canyon Farms, Beef Northwest Portland General Electric and Columbia River Processing. They’re seeking class action status for the case on behalf of all affected residents in Morrow and Umatilla counties who own or rent their homes, which could bring tens of thousands of other plaintiffs into the suit.

“We appreciate Amazon taking the first step toward solving the nitrate pollution problem, but the work is far from over,” said Steve Berman, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, in a statement.

Berman added that they would continue to prosecute the case against the other companies and the port.

“The parties that contributed to this problem have a responsibility to come forward and help resolve these issues,” he said.

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 said in an email.

The full lawsuit seeks an order mandating that the defendants establish a state-backed groundwater remediation and cleanup program and a program to monitor the health of residents exposed to the contaminated water. They also want the entities to ensure that residents are diagnosed and treated in a timely fashion for any illnesses caused by the nitrate contamination.

The suit was filed 10 months after Gov. Tina Kotek first visited Boardman residents and promised swift action on the water contamination issues, and nearly two years after the Morrow County Commission declared an emergency over the contamination. That emergency declaration came more than 30 years after the state first acknowledged the area’s water supply needed to be cleaned up.

The Oregon Health Authority since 2024 found that at least 634 domestic drinking water wells in the area contain unsafe levels of nitrate, some with nearly 10 times the federal limit for safe drinking water, and more than 420 show elevated levels that could lead to long-term health problems.

Many residents first tested their wells with the help of the nonprofit Oregon Rural Action, which has spent the last few years advocating for state and federal leaders to exercise more authority over the contamination issue and those responsible. Organizers said in a statement that Amazon’s settlement was a “first step” for corporate accountability for area pollution, and urged Amazon to slow their expansion in the region and invest in treating their wastewater so no further harm is done.

“These billion-dollar companies pollute with impunity, without regard for the human cost,” organizer Nella Parks said. “We have stood at people’s doorsteps as they realize nitrate may have caused their miscarriages or cancers. People can’t sell or refinance their homes. They are stuck and sick; they are tired of polluters getting away with the theft of their health and wealth.”

Pearson, one of the plaintiffs, told Kotek at the 2023 community meeting in Boardman that he had been drinking his well water for 30 years, unaware until 2022, when 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 suit.

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.

“Plaintiffs and other class members should not be required to tolerate continued exposure to contaminated water or to bear the cost of obtaining non-polluted water,” the lawsuit says.

This story is republished from the Oregon Capital Chronicle, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet that provides original reporting, analysis and commentary on Oregon state government and politics.