Two Eggs, Orange Juice, And A Dry Riverbed
Published on June 10, 2008
Ecology’s landmark decision on Avista dams punts on the river’s problems and leaves Spokane’s signature waterfalls retreating to a bare trickle on summer mornings.
As regulatory testimony goes, it doesn’t get any more eloquent than the letter that Spokane’s ardent water guardian Rachael Paschal Osborn sent to the Washington Department of Ecology last month.
“The beauty of Spokane’s waterfalls has been recognized since its very beginnings,”
she wrote in a passage crediting the research of historian J. William T. Youngs.
“On the morning of May 12, 1873, James Glover, the founder of Spokane, awoke on the dirt floor of a roofless log cabin where he had just spent his first night in Spokane. As he rolled out of his blankets, he told himself, ‘I am going to see the falls.’ He was soon sitting on ‘a great rock’ overlooking the Spokane River. Glover later wrote, ‘I gave myself completely over to admiration and wonder at the beautiful, clear stream that was pouring into the kettle and over the falls.’ He was so engrossed that he let himself be soaked by the spray: ‘I sat there, unconscious of anything but the river, gazing and wondering and admiring.’”
Paschal Osborn was hardly alone in appealing to the deeper reaches of the soul in beseeching Ecology to give more water to fish and people than to eastern Washington’s ancestral utility. The agency received a flood of comments asking it to require Avista to divert an ample amount of water away from its downtown hydroelectric plant to the upper falls.
But it didn’t work. When Ecology sent out its “Good News re. our River” press release at three minutes before noon Tuesday, the deal was done. Avista would be set for long-term relicensing at its four Spokane River dams, with pretty much business as usual. If Avista seemed like a powerful company on Monday, tomorrow it will seem omnipotent.
It wasn’t just the signature falls. Despite the undisputed fact that municipal utility rate payers and private companies face the burden of millions of dollars to upgrade waste water treatment plants along the Spokane River, the company whose dams are largely responsible for the river’s fiendishly difficult dissolved oxygen problem gets what, at worst, is the assignment of kicking its share of the problem down the road.
“Notwithstanding Ecology’s spin on today’s decision,” said Center for Justice attorney Rick Eichstaedt, “all of the concerns we raised in our comments to the agency remain.”
As much as from Ecology’s verdict, the dismay river advocates felt Tuesday afternoon was darkened further by the knowledge that this decision, at this point in time, was a rare opportunity to make dramatic changes to restore the river’s aquatic and aesthetic good health. In the lifelessly dry terms of the process, this was the “401 certification”–the once every three to five decades opportunity under the federal Clean Water Act for states to require water quality remedies to hydroelectric plants within their borders. Countless hours and literally hundreds pages of public testimony. Very little to show for it.
“My main disappointment,” said CFJ attorney Bonne Beavers, “was that Ecology failed to use its extraordinary powers to require Avista to operate its dams so that they do not impair our waters. If Ecology refuses to certify that the dam operation complies with our water quality standards, Avista doesn’t get the license. These licenses last from 35 to 50 years. This was our only chance to comment. We know that Avista contributes to low dissolved oxygen. But for the dams, the problem would not exist.”
Outside of boating and fishing enthusiasts, and those who live along Long Lake, few people are in a position to notice how the Avista dams on the river effect water quality.
That’s not true of the upper falls in downtown Spokane, however.
Ecology, in its press release, announced the decision this way:
“Another goal of the 401 Certification is to achieve the flows that residents and visitors want to see. The document contains aesthetic flow requirements. Under the permit, downtown visitors and local residents will see more water flowing through the North Channel, which is currently dry for much of the summer. The increase would take place at 10 a.m. until 30 minutes after sunset.”
Minimum flows (meaning between 10 a.m. and dusk) would increase, Ecology noted, by “approximately 300 cubic feet per second.”
It was clearly the hope of the CFJ clients–the Sierra Club’s Upper Columbia River Group and Paschal Osborn’s Center for Environmental Law & Policy (CELP)–that the wind of public opinion was in their sails on this one. As she noted on the first page of her comments on behalf of both groups, even a study done in support of lower flows found study participants favoring higher flows.
“Moreover,” she wrote, “the economic impact of requiring high waterfall flows is insignificant compared to Avista’s power generation capability and cost to consumers.”
In her comments Paschal Osborn requested a minimum of 500 cubic feet per second at the upper falls, “from 5 a.m. to midnight.”
By comparison, Ecology’s fateful decision is more than a glass half empty.
“Think of it,” Eichstaedt says, “you live here or you’re in town from Topeka and you want to have a morning jog through the park or breakfast overlooking the north channel, or maybe you’re simply biking to work. What we’re offering you is a nice view of basalt where the river is supposed to be. Ecology and Avista have sold us and the river short.”
Beavers, in recent years, has worked as hard as anyone on the river’s dissolved oxygen problem on behalf of the Center’s river clients. Tuesday’s decision left her shaking her head about a lost opportunity, and a big one at that.
” As in other states,” she said, “Avista could have been given a requirement to increase dissolved oxygen levels either by aeration or other practices, or perhaps by contributing to the reduction efforts of river dischargers. Instead, Avista gets to ’study’ the problem, which it has been doing for the past four years or more, and then come up with a plan in two years. The public does not get an opportunity to comment on that plan. In taking this tack, Ecology shuts the public out of the process.”
Click here to read the Center’s comments on behalf of the Sierra Club.
Posted June 10th