MILTON-FREEWATER, Ore. — Milton-Freewater officials are worried the city will be required to spend millions to provide water to a trailer park outside city limits after the county declared the wells there a threat to public health.
The Umatilla County Board of Commissioners deemed the wells a threat because they are sometimes contaminated with E. coli bacteria. The board’s vote led to an Oregon Health Authority investigation, and to the possibility that Milton-Freewater would be ordered to provide water and sewer service.
City officials don’t want to annex the area north of city limits and have asked commissioners to retract their finding.
The situation got to this point because Nancy Shaw, the owner of the Locust Mobile Village, employed a seldom-used law to petition a local public health authority to investigate and determine whether a threat to public health exists. The local health authority in the Milton-Freewater area is Umatilla County.
“Ms. Shaw is not interested in cramming this down someone’s throat if there is another way of doing it,” Chris Burford, her attorney, told the East Oregonian newspaper.
City Councilman Steve Irving said the state told Milton-Freewater officials that if the county withdraws its finding of a health hazard, then the entire process would come to an end. With that in mind, city officials recently pleaded with county commissioners for a retraction.
Irving told commissioners the city is not opposed to annexation when developers pay for it and most people want it, but this is not one of those cases.
City Manager Linda Hall said commissioners relied on old data, and more recent tests show the wells are clean. She said the county should write a letter to the state to withdraw the determination.
But county attorney Doug Olsen said the law required the board to investigate if there was a health hazard and make a determination. That’s all the board did, he said. Commissioners agreed, saying they see no way to retract the vote.
Shaw’s lawyer, meanwhile, complained his client has been left out of talks between city and state officials, and can’t even get a meeting with the city.
Hall told the newspaper Friday that she would meet with Shaw if the city’s lawyer says it’s OK.
“Just please remove the gun from the city’s head for us to annex where the majority of the people don’t want to be annexed,” she said.
