EPA to States: Treat Pollution in Spokane River as a bi-state river
Friday, September 5
News Release From Sierra Club and Center for Justice
Contact:
– Rick Eichstaedt, Center for Justice – 509.835-5211 ricke@cforjustice.org
– John Osborn, Sierra Club (Upper Columbia River Group) – john@waterplanet.ws
Spokane – In a surprising development announced on Thursday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has decided to abandon its controversial approach to measuring oxygen-depleting pollution to the Spokane River. River attorneys with the Center for Justice who represent the Sierra Club’s Upper Columbia River Group hailed this decisions as a major victory for the Spokane River.
“This decision reaffirms EPA’s national watershed approach in addressing multi-state water quality issues,” said Rick Eichstaedt, attorney with Center for Justice. “For the Spokane River, Idaho and Washington now need to work together – not apart – to meet protective water quality standards. EPA at the national level is agreeing with what we have been saying for years: the proposed clean-up plan is illegal and wrong for the Spokane River.”
The Spokane River begins in Idaho and flows into Washington State. The river has multiple, severe pollution problems. Sewage from the half million residents in both states flows to sewage treatment plants that dump to the Spokane River. Nutrients from sewage effluent – especially phosphorus – cause algae blooms, use up oxygen in the water, and risk fish kills. Dams aggravate these pollution problems.
The federal Clean Water Act directs government agencies to clean up water pollution by setting water quality standards and creating cleanup plans called TMDLs (Total Maximum Daily Loads). Idaho and Washington officials made a political decision that would allow each state to ignore the other’s pollution. Agency scientists resigned or were reassigned because of political pressure to weaken cleanup plans for the Spokane River.
For years Sierra Club and the Center for Justice insisted this decision was illegal. In June CFJ attorney Bonne Beavers wrote a letter to the national office of EPA pointing out the significance of the Spokane River decision for rivers such as the Mississippi River. The Mississippi flows through multiple states with an expanding dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. On September 4, EPA reversed decisions made by county commissioners, state officials, and EPA regional officials — and will now require a multi-state, watershed approach to the river’s pollution woes.
“Rivers flow across state lines,” said John Osborn, Spokane physician and chair of the Sierra Club’s Upper Columbia River Group. “ Sick rivers need a holistic approach – not fragmented care that risks river health. One of the promises of the Clean Water Act is that agencies will actually remedy interstate pollution problems.
“Clean water in America requires political leadership and courage.”
Links:
Overview of the decision: “River Reversal”
Sierra Club/CFJ, Letter to EPA on abandonment of watershed approach, June 18, 2008
Media Archive: dissolved oxygen and the Spokane River