I n the spring of 2022, Jim Doherty kept having the same conversation with folks at the only grocery store in Boardman, his eastern Oregon hometown, or at the grain depot where he picked up food for his four ranch dogs. Healthy adults that these people knew were coming down with unexplained medical conditions, including diseases and cancers that usually afflicted the elderly. “It was kinda grim,” Doherty says.

Sixty years old, broad-chested, with a salt-and-pepper goatee, Doherty had been running a cattle ranch business with his wife for 25 years when he entered public service in 2016, winning a seat on Morrow County’s three-person board of commissioners.

What stood out about those conversations was the way people connected them to a problem with water in the area. Doherty knew what

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