Spokane Riverkeeper serves City of Spokane notice over PCB discharges to Spokane River
Center for Justice News Release
December 2nd, 2009
On behalf of the Spokane Riverkeeper, Gonzaga Law School’s Environmental Law Clinic today filed a sixty day “notice of violation” with the City of Spokane as a precedent to bringing a federal citizen enforcement lawsuit under the Clean Water Act. The purpose of the lawsuit, if and when it is filed, will be to expedite a dramatic reduction in the discharge of toxic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) to the Spokane River via the city’s antiquated stormwater system. PCBs at levels of concern for public health were first detected in river fish in 1995 and the river has since been subject to a number of health advisories as a result.
“This is a regrettable but necessary step to try to force a solution to an alarming problem,” says Spokane Riverkeeper Rick Eichstaedt. “With PCBs continuing to be found in fish at levels well above public health thresholds, the city just has to be working harder, smarter, and faster to reduce these toxic discharges.”
PCBs are synthetic, organic chemicals that bioaccumulate in fish and other organisms. Although they are almost insoluble in water, PCBs strongly attach to sediment particles that move readily through sewers and waterways. They are considered to be a probable human carcinogen and are associated with numerous other serious health effects, including effects on the immune, reproductive, nervous and endocrine systems. Although the manufacture of PCBs was banned in 1976, EPA estimates that, nationwide, hundreds of tons of PCBs are still in service in old electricity transformers and other applications.
Moreover, PCBs are highly persistent in the environment and continue to enter the Spokane River and other watersheds. A December 2007 report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency identified the City of Spokane “as the largest continuing source of PCBs to the river.”
Eichstaedt said he remains hopeful that continuing talks with city officials may lead to a settlement similar to that reached last year between Sierra Club and Spokane. That agreement expedited improvements to the city’s sewer system, to reduce raw sewage discharges to the river and Latah Creek. Yet, as today’s notice makes clear, the Riverkeeper and the Environmental Law Clinic believe city officials have known about illegal PCB discharges from city outfalls since 2004 but have repeatedly failed to report the violations or take meaningful and effective steps to stop them.
“Regrettably,” said Eichstaedt, “despite the city’s multi-million dollar capital projects to address sewage treatment problems, it has not reduced PCB discharges and has done little to prevent the transport of PCB contaminated sediment to the Spokane River.”
The notice of violation alleges procedural and pollution standard violations of the Clean Water Act as well as the state’s municipal storm water permit covering Spokane. If and when the suit is filed, the Riverkeeper will be seeking civil penalties for each violation of the Clean Water Act occurring between March 15, 2004 and January 12, 2009, and for all subsequent violations. The suit will also seek injunctive relief to prevent further CWA violations.
“The citizen enforcement provisions of the Clean Water Act exist for just these types of situations,” says Mike Chappell, the Environmental Law Clinic’s director. “Here we have ample evidence that violations occurred and that very little is being done to prevent them from re-occurring, and thus continuing to contaminate the river and its ecosystem.”
In addition to citing the city’s failures to adequately address the PCB discharge problem, the notice reiterates Eichstaedt’s criticism that the state’s Department of Ecology has dragged its feet on putting together a PCB compliance plan for the river.
According to the 2007 EPA study, PCB concentrations in Spokane stormwater would have to be reduced several thousand-fold to get down to levels that would be in compliance with state and tribal water quality standards. PCB levels in Spokane River fish are regularly measured at levels more than ten times what the EPA considers safe for human consumption.
For previous Center for Justice news stories related to this issue go here, and here. To read Kevin Taylor’s recent story in the Pacific Northwest Inlander about the City of Spokane’s PCB problems, go here.