July 2026, Portland: Today, a coalition of public interest organizations filed a lawsuit challenging the Oregon Departments of Agriculture and Environmental Quality’s new factory farm general permit over its failure to protect the state’s waters from the vast quantities of waste industrial livestock operations produce.
The general permit regulates more than 300 of the state’s hundreds of factory farms, dictating how they must prevent pollution by managing their copious amounts of waste. The parties filing suit are Willamette Riverkeeper, Food & Water Watch, Center for Food Safety, and Animal Legal Defense Fund.
“Monitoring is absolutely vital to ensure clean water for our communities,” said Willamette Riverkeeper Staff Attorney Lindsey Hutchison. “By failing to include adequate monitoring requirements in the general permit we are seeing state regulators fail to do their job and allow an industry notorious for polluting given free rein to continue polluting our waterways without oversight that would allow for proper enforcement.”
In today’s filing, groups advocating for clean water and sustainable agriculture challenged the permit’s failure to protect Oregon’s waterways and to require meaningful pollution monitoring of factory farm discharges. The groups previously submitted comments on the draft permit laying out the necessary changes that would have ensured the final permit complies with clean water laws and holds this highly polluting industry accountable. However, the final permit did not address these failings with the necessary steps to protect Oregon’s waterways and communities from manure and other harmful pollution.
“ODA violated its core duties by failing to put in place lawful, enforceable safeguards to protect Oregonians and Oregon’s native ecosystems. The general permit greenlights 350 massive factory farms, over 65% of all such operations in Oregon, while ignoring significant pollution sources,” said Suzannah Smith, attorney with Petitioner Center for Food Safety. “We are asking the Court to ensure this permit does not unlawfully and irresponsibly allow factory farms to shift the costs of their pollution onto the shoulders of Oregon communities and into our environment.”
“It has never been clearer that factory farms are polluting waterways and drinking water across Oregon. Nonetheless, state regulators have capitulated to Big Ag and pushed through a permit that allows factory farms to continue to pollute our waters with far too little oversight,” said Food & Water Watch Legal Director Tarah Heinzen. “We need strong permits that prioritize clean water over industry profits.”
“For decades Oregon has allowed the factory farming industry to pollute its waterways with manure and other waste,” said Christine Ball-Blakely, Senior Staff Attorney with the Animal Legal Defense Fund. “The Tillamook Bay and other degraded Oregon waters are proof of the state’s profound failure to regulate this harmful industry, with communities, animals, and ecosystems paying the price. Strengthening this permit is not just common sense—it’s the state’s legal obligation.”
Factory farms are one of the driving factors of water pollution in the state, including groundwater that supplies 80% of rural Oregonians with drinking water. These operations generate massive amounts of waste, including manure mixed with heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, and other contaminants. According to Food & Water Watch analysis, in 2022 milk cows on Oregon’s mega-dairies alone produced over four billion pounds of manure — or enough to fill two-and-a-half Olympic swimming pools each day.
Many operations store this waste in open cesspools called “lagoons” and spray it onto fields. Without effective pollution prevention technology and monitoring, factory farms threaten state waterways and the communities that use them.
Oregon already contends with 122,800 miles of impaired rivers and streams and three groundwater management areas that were created because of dangerous levels of nitrate contamination in the areas’ groundwater. This drinking water crisis disproportionately burdens rural, low-wealth communities of color.
The Petitioners are Willamette Riverkeeper, Food & Water Watch, Animal Legal Defense Fund, and Center for Food Safety, and are represented by Sugerman Dahab and in-house counsel.
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