Buying Land in Morrow County, Oregon

The Port of Morrow: real growth, real industrial zoning

The Port of Morrow, centered on Boardman, has grown steadily since the 1980s into one of Oregon's most significant industrial complexes -- food processing, agricultural product handling, shipping and warehouse facilities, energy businesses, and, increasingly, large-scale data centers including Amazon Web Services operations. To accommodate this, Morrow County has rezoned substantial acreage near the port from its original Agricultural designation to Industrial under the county's Port Industrial (PI) zone -- one ordinance alone converted roughly 510 acres from Agricultural to Port Industrial use. For land near this corridor, that industrial designation, not the county's dominant EFU/rangeland zoning found elsewhere, is what actually governs development potential and neighboring land-use expectations.

A serious, documented groundwater contamination crisis

The same industrial growth that has brought jobs and tax revenue to Morrow County has also driven a genuinely serious environmental problem: nitrate contamination of the groundwater aquifer underlying the Lower Umatilla Basin, which spans Morrow and neighboring Umatilla counties. Data centers and food-processing operations at the Port of Morrow use large volumes of water for cooling and processing; that water, elevated in nitrate concentration through the process, is discharged to the port's wastewater system and, in significant part, land-applied to area farm fields -- a practice that has been directly linked to the nitrate levels showing up in hundreds of nearby domestic wells. The Oregon Health Authority has documented more than 600 affected wells across the roughly 562-square-mile groundwater management area, some testing at more than six times the federal safety limit. Amazon agreed in March 2026 to a $20.5 million settlement over its role, while denying liability; litigation continues against the Port of Morrow itself, Lamb Weston, and multiple large agricultural operations named in the underlying case.

This is not a peripheral concern for a Morrow County land buyer relying on a private domestic well -- it's arguably the single most important due-diligence item in the county right now, ahead of even standard EFU zoning review. Given how significant and specific this issue is, the full picture -- including practical steps for testing a well and understanding current remediation efforts -- lives on this site's dedicated Morrow County well-water page.

A statewide policy response, rooted here

Partly in response to the water-use and pollution concerns that came to a head in Morrow County, the Oregon Legislature adopted House Bill 4084, establishing a temporary statewide pause on new data-center enterprise-zone tax authorizations. This is a state-level policy rather than a Morrow County ordinance, but it's directly traceable to this county's experience, and it signals that data-center water use is likely to face continued legislative and regulatory scrutiny statewide -- relevant context for anyone evaluating industrial-adjacent land near the Port of Morrow with future large-scale water users in mind.