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In June, the Oregon Legislature passed a law that imposed restrictions on timber companies spraying pesticides from helicopters within 300 feet of homes, schools and drinking water. The measure, which had the blessing of the timber industry, came after timber companies and environmental groups agreed to negotiate in 2021 what could be the biggest changes to Oregon’s logging laws in decades.

The effort focuses not on drinking water but habitat conservation for salmon and other protected species. The two sides have pledged to have an agreement in place by the end of 2021. It remains unclear whether they will find common ground.

Even if those rules are strengthened, risks will continue for towns trying to protect their drinking water unless they are able to purchase the watershed or find some other way to slow the rate of logging, said Whitman, the state’s top environmental regulator.

If timber companies log entire watersheds as they have on the Oregon Coast, simply leaving a few more trees along creeksides won’t be enough, he said.

“It’s not going to avoid some of the effects that these drinking water providers are seeing,” he said. “You’re going to see some landslides. You’re going to see more sedimentation. And most importantly, you’re going to see streams dry up in the late summer and early fall because you don’t have that tree cover.”

The tap water in Arch Cape, on Oregon’s rocky north coast, violated federal drinking water standards again and again while the forests around its supply were logged, forcing the town to spend $1 million in 2010 on a new treatment plant.

The town sits in Clatsop County, which has lost an estimated $170 million in revenue to timber tax cuts since 1991. Phil Chick, the district water manager, said the treatment plant upgrade raised annual bills by $40. But it was merely a reaction to the problem, he said, not a long-term solution.

The water district plans a 2021 tax levy that will cost roughly $2,300 per home for its 300 customers, part of a $5.5 million effort to buy the forests around its drinking water source.

Arch Cape still plans to log the forest, Chick said, but under far more rigorous standards than Oregon requires, with no use of herbicides.

If the effort to purchase the land fails, Chick said he worries about the future of the forest, “because we’re not sure who could come in and buy it. We don’t know who our neighbor is going to be.”

Other towns haven’t been able to afford what Arch Cape is attempting. In Corbett, Busto said purchasing private timberlands was far too expensive.

In Wheeler, where private timber companies owned 98% of the land around the water supply, Burden said she would’ve loved to have bought and protected part of the forest. But the town of 428 residents struggles just to keep a handful of city staff members employed.

“You looked at the budget; there’s so little in it that we barely get by,” said Burden, who served five terms as mayor of Wheeler before retiring this year.

When federal rules required Wheeler to filter its drinking water, the city decided it would be cheaper and more reliable to drill wells than to treat the creek water off industrial timberlands. Then in 2001, debris from logging on a nearby ridge rapidly filled the town’s reservoirs with silt and gravel, sending the town scrambling to get a new water system.

Wheeler has been paying off a $1.1 million debt from its water project for nearly 20 years.

Burden said the debt handcuffed the town budget. Wheeler has no money to replace its aging stormwater pipes and drainages to handle wind and rain storms on the Oregon Coast, which scientists predict will become more frequent and severe because of climate change.

In 2015, the city flooded so badly the post office closed for seven months. City officials said the flooding was exacerbated not just by their aging stormwater system, but by runoff from logging above the town.

Since Burden’s first stint as mayor in the 1990s, nearly 90% of the forests surrounding Wheeler have been logged.

Residents continue to complain of drift from aerial spraying and heavy sediment pollution into Nehalem Bay, home to clams, Dungeness crab and runs of chinook and coho salmon.

Burden said she used to attend Oregon Board of Forestry meetings to advocate for issues that included conserving forestland to help Wheeler’s tourism and recreation economy. She eventually gave up, tired of the little progress she’d made with the seven-member panel.

“I knew there was just nothing to be gained for a little town like mine,” she said.