Judge: Explore PCBs settlement, Sierra Club lawyer says agencies should be ordered to set limits

By Jim Camden
Spokesman Review

SEATTLE – A federal judge should order state and federal agencies to set strict limits for the amount of a cancer-causing chemical that can go into the Spokane River because state and federal agencies won’t, an attorney for Sierra Club said Monday.

“This is the worst PCB contamination problem of any river in the state,” Richard Smith told U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Jacobs Rothstein.

Attorneys for state and federal environmental agencies said they don’t have enough information about how most of the polychlorinated biphenyls are getting into the river. They’ve decided, therefore, to use a different method for controlling that chemical from the five entities that have permits to discharge wastewater into the Spokane River.

Read Spokesman article here.