Even with two special sessions and counting, there were issues that the Legislature didn’t get to this year. But with lawmakers’ likely failure to pass legislation that would have helped the state Department of Ecology develop and enforce water quality rules, the state may now be turning over the issue to the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
As the federal agency continues its own work under the federal Clean Water Act, the state Department of Ecology and Gov. Jay Inslee had proposed developing the state’s own standards that would have then been submitted for approval by the EPA.
The idea was to set standards that would result in water clean enough to allow state residents to eat the fish that swim in our rivers, lakes and bays. That standard, previously set in 1974, assumed the average person ate less than 2 ounces of fish a week, a paltry amount for most state residents, even more so for members of Indian tribes in the state. The Department of Ecology this year proposed a rule based on a daily fish-consumption rate of 175 grams, about 6 ounces. Using that rate, the state wanted rules that set allowable chemical concentrations in state waters that would set the risk of cancer at 1 in 100,000. The EPA is instead seeking a cancer risk rate of 1 in 1 million, a standard backed by state tribes and environmental groups.
Under the states’ rules, the new standards would be two to 20 times more protective regarding 70 percent of the chemicals of concern. Standards for the remaining 30 percent would be maintained at the current limits.
Inslee had sought to strengthen his hand with the EPA by proposing legislation that would have addressed water quality by finding ways to eliminate some of the chemical contamination at the source. By limiting use of certain chemicals in industry that are used in everyday products, such as brake pads, flame retardants in furniture, softeners in plastics and metal in roofing material, those same contaminants, then, don’t have to be removed from water down the line.
But that legislation was weakened a little in the House, even more in the Senate, and had been left untouched since then as lawmakers hashed out budget deals this week.
The EPA hasn’t gone anywhere, however. While the federal agency’s more stringent limit appears to offer greater protection, it may be requiring a standard that industry and even municipal water treatment plants can’t meet, even with the best available technology. Setting an unachievable standard does nothing more to protect health than did the old standards.
Gov. Inslee and the Ecology Department can still move ahead with the state’s own clean water rule, and should. But the clean water legislation would have helped the state retain control, rather than surrender it to the EPA.
The final gavel has yet to fall in Olympia. If lawmakers hope to avoid a more stringent federal rule, they should pass the legislation before adjournment sine die.
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