Source: https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/, March 31, 2026
By: Alex Baumhardt

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. Read more.