SALEM — Oregon lawmakers may mobilize a team of state agencies to fix the bureaucratic pitfalls that often prevent treated wastewater from being reused for irrigation.

House Bill 2169 would direct state regulators focused on the environment, water, public health and fish and wildlife to work together to “expand opportunities for water reuse by overcoming institutional and regulatory barriers.”

The proposal is intended to build on earlier legislation that required the state’s Department of Environmental Quality to identify how to lower the hurdles to water recycling faced by sewage treatment facilities.

“The state and partners probably should have gotten around to this a while ago,” said Rep. Ken Helm, D-Beaverton, chair of the House Agriculture Committee, which introduced the bill.

Supporters of HB 2169 say increasing wastewater recycling could help irrigators and others better manage water scarcity while allowing sewage facilities to comply with more stringent Clean Water Act standards.

However, experts say sewage facilities are often dissuaded from investing in wastewater recycling because they lack a clear regulatory pathway to obtaining the necessary permits in a timely and cost-effective manner.

“Many have struggled to develop projects or have given up on exploring them because they’ve found the current permitting framework too difficult, too complex and uncertain to navigate,” said Susie Smith, retired executive director of the Oregon Association of Clean Water Agencies.

Even if treated wastewater is sufficiently free of toxins and pollutants to be released into a river, that doesn’t necessarily mean it can be used to irrigate crops and other vegetation under current rules.

Sewage facilities must first demonstrate to state regulators how the wastewater would move through the irrigation system to ensure it doesn’t inadvertently cause contamination.

Though problems could hypothetically arise from irrigation if the wastewater ends up in a smaller waterway that doesn’t adequately dilute remaining pollutants, critics say the added regulatory scrutiny is often excessive and thwarts environmentally beneficial projects.

“When you talk to guys and gals on the street and say, ‘We have to discharge our treated water that is almost good enough to drink over here and over there, but not where we really need it,’ they just shake their heads and don’t understand,” Helm said during a recent legislative hearing. “This is a government inefficiency we should fix.”

Under HB 2169, the DEQ would form an interagency team with representatives of the state’s Water Resources Department, Fish and Wildlife Service and Health Authority to revise regulatory language and iron out conflicts among agencies that stand in the way of water recycling, among other provisions.

Negotiating the rules governing water recycling has been difficult, so the state government aims to update policies and processes to make it easier for wastewater facilities to evaluate the feasibility of such projects, said Rian vanden Hooff, legislative policy analyst for DEQ.

For example, discharging treated wastewater into irrigation canals could make farmers more resilient during drought, but regulatory obstacles have often discouraged such plans, he said. “Due in part to this complexity, only one municipality in our entire state, the City of Hermiston, has succeeded in clearing all the permitting requirements to allow for this beneficial reuse.”

Since heat is considered a pollutant, sewage facilities are looking for ways to decrease the temperature of treated wastewater without investing in expensive cooling equipment, experts say. Water recycling is an appealing alternative, if the regulations were less convoluted.

“Diverting treated wastewater discharge for reuse can reduce the total amount of nutrient and temperature loading on a river while reducing water withdrawal stresses at the same time,” said Todd Miller, deputy director of the Eugene-Springfield Metropolitan Wastewater Management Commission.

The commission is already reusing wastewater to irrigate a poplar farm that’s also fertilized with treated sewage, or biosolids, but would like to expand its recycling program to provide water to local parks and sand and gravel companies, he said.

While a federal grant is supporting such an expansion, the commission needs the state government to clarify the regulatory path ahead, Miller said. “We need help from the state agencies who we must turn to for assistance and guidance, but more often than not, we only hear challenges and are faced with a lack of solution-oriented guidance.”