Something about this doesn’t smell right: Environmental lawyer, Brent Foster, resigned yesterday after – allegedly - misrepresenting his involvement in a criminal environmental case. Foster was hired by Oregon Attorney General John Kroger to lead the crackdown on polluter. Before that , Foster was with Columbia Riverkeeper. The resignation came over Foster's involvement in a criminal pollution case brought by the Hood River County district attorney's office against David Ryan, the owner of Hood River Juice. The issues rests on samples of illegal wastewater discharges from Hood River Juice.
But take a whiff of Hood River Juice's CEO David Ryan: Last October Ryan found himself in court facing 12 felony water pollution charges, including illegal pollution in a water supply canal used by local farmers and falsifying state pollution reporting records. The day after Ryan’s last trip to Hood River Circuit Court, he received a visit from the Oregon State Police. The state agency handcuffed, arrested and booked him on his second set of pollution charges within a year. This time, Farmers Irrigation District and state officials had found a pipe that was bubbling up what looked and smelled like apple juice waste directly across the street from the juice plant; the pipe had created a small sinkhole in the County’s roadbed. Neighboring farms suffered and it wasn't until the Hood River deputy District attorney Kate Stebbins and Craig Ball, an Oregon State Police investigator working with Oregon DEQ to investigate environmental crimes got involved that things started to happen...And they haven't stopped.
- KBOO