Same Old Smell?
Published on February 23, 2009
The Center’s Rick Eichstaedt testifies against a hastily introduced bill to relax cleanup timelines for the Spokane River and other state waters.
As if to prove that efforts to bring Spokane River dischargers into compliance with water pollution control laws will never lack for comedy or desperate missions to change rules or bully scientists, a measure now before the Washington state
legislature would relax compliance schedules for those who discharge wastes into polluted waterways like the Spokane River.
Or at least the bill would try.
But as veteran water lawyer Nina Bell of Northwest Environmental Advocates testified Friday, the state actually can’t change its water quality standards by legislative fiat. To try to relax its rules to allow polluters extra time to come into compliance the state would have to get approval from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. And that, Bell noted, could take a lot longer than the folks pushing the bill imagine.
The legislation in question is Senate Bill 6036 (a companion House bill is, according to the Spokesman-Review, being supported by Spokane-area Reps. Timm Ormsby and Alex Wood). The purpose of the bill is to “amend the state’s water quality standards to authorize compliance schedules for discharge permits” issued for current dischargers into waterways like the Spokane River, which are currently listed as “impaired waters” because of excess pollution. The bill would not affect Spokane County which, as a potential new discharger to the Spokane River, would have to be in compliance on day one.
“In general, compliance schedules longer than ten years must be unavailable” under a cleanup plan, but the new bill tries to lay out a framework to extend compliance plans up to twenty years.
According to press accounts in the Spokesman-Review and The Inlander, the main push for the bill comes from Inland Empire Paper Co., a Spokane River discharger, the Department of Ecology and Spokane-area legislators.
Center for Justice water attorney Rick Eichstaedt testified alongside Bell Friday and, like her, roundly opposed the measure.
“First,” Eichstaedt said in his written testimony, “by extending the time to come into compliance with our State’s water quality standards, this legislation appears to be inconsistent with the Federal Clean Water Act’s requirements that requires compliance with water quality standards ‘as soon as possible.’”
Secondly, he noted, because the impetus for the bill is clearly Spokane River issues, any intervention to change state water quality standards is “premature” in that the Spokane River cleanup plan for dissolved oxygen (which will guide permits) has not even been completed yet.
Rick’s testimony can be read here. Nina Bell’s testimony can be read here.
This the link to the S-R’s 2/20/09 story on the bill. This is the link to the TVW video of last Friday’s hearing before the Senate Environment, Water, and Energy Committee. Spokane River Forum has more here.
For those moved to contact Rep. Ormsby, his number is (360) 786-7946. Rep. Alex Wood can be reached at (360) 786-7888. Sen. Lisa Brown can be reached at (360) 786-7604.