by Renee Kjartan

Washington Waterways First In Carcinogen Discharges

A new report ranks Washington state as number one among the 50 states in the amount of carcinogenic chemicals discharged directly into its waterways by industry. Even New Jersey, with a reputation for heavy chemical pollution, dumps less.

The report, titled Troubled Waters: A Report on Toxic Releases into America's Waterways, was compiled by U.S. PIRG (Public Interest Research Group), using statistics from the federal governments Toxic Release Index (TRI). According to the report, nationwide about a billion pounds of toxics were dumped directly into rivers, lakes and bays between 1992 and 1996, and 1.5 billion pounds were dumped down the drains into publicly-owned sewers.

Jon Stier, an attorney with WashPIRG, a Washington state-based associate of U.S. PIRG, said "industry is pumping millions of pounds of toxics into our waterways every year, and the problem is getting worse." All this pollution was legal. According to WashPIRG, administrators of the 1972 Clean Water Act grant permits to pollute while failing to get industry to reduce the pollution. At the same time, Washington state and Gov. Gary Locke are asking homeowners to send fewer toxics into the waters, but aren't putting pressure on big polluters to cut their discharges.

What is going on here?

Under the Clean Water Act, all toxics discharged from a point source (that is, from a pipe into the water) were supposed to be eliminated by 1985. But industry got involved in the process, Stier said, and the process got subverted to the point where permits are routinely granted to industry to dump toxics into the waterways. "In recent years there has been no real attempt to ratchet down the dumping," Stier said. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says industry may not discharge a pollutant if there is technology available to eliminate it from the discharges. But there is little known about many of the chemicals being discharged, let alone technology available to clear these out of the discharges. And to date there are no serious attempts to require industries to reduce or eliminate their use or discharge of toxics, Stier said.

The result is that today, Weyerhaeuser is Washington's worst water polluter. The paper-processing company dumped over 780,000 pounds of carcinogens into the Columbia River between 1992 and 1996. Altogether, Washington waters received over 1.4 million pounds of cancer-causing chemicals during the period, according to the TRI. Waterways receiving the most carcinogens after the Columbia River were Bellingham Bay, Puget Sound, Everett Harbor, and the Straits of Juan de Fuca.

In addition to cancer-causing chemicals, Washington's waters also received large amounts of persistent toxic metals and reproductive toxins. High on the list for toxic metals in the five-year period were the Straits of Juan de Fuca, Bellingham Bay, Fidalgo Bay, Columbia River, and the Strait of Georgia.

Washington waters receiving the most reproductive toxins were the Columbia River, Powder Mill Creek, Puget Sound, Fidalgo Bay, and Sinclair Inlet.

The statistics on pollutants entering the rivers and streams come from industry itself. And, the tons of waste reported constitute only about 5 percent of the toxics, said Stier. The rest go unreported because many have been poorly tested for toxicity and the EPA does not require industries to disclose many discharges. There are some 73,000 chemicals being used in commerce and perhaps dumped into the water, Stier said, but only 620 must be reported to the federal Toxics Release Inventory, on which U.S.PIRG based its survey.

In addition to almost a billion pounds of legal point-source discharges nationwide, industry dumped over 1.4 billion pounds of toxic chemicals down the drain, into sewage-treatment plants nationwide, between 1992 and 1996. These so-called "transfers" of toxics to publicly-owned treatment works are not counted as releases of toxic chemicals into the environment, the U.S. PIRG report noted. Regulations governing toxic discharges to sewers are less strict than those governing point-source dumps into waterways. The EPA estimates that some 25 percent of these toxics flow untreated into the waterways. But the gaps in reporting are so great, that "the load of toxic pollution in most rivers, streams, lakes and bays over the past several years may be many times greater than the amounts reported," the Troubled Waters report stated. Heavy sewage-treatment dumpers in the Puget Sound area include Praegizer Ind. Redmond, in Redmond; Darigold-Issaquah, in Issaquah; Boeing Commercial Airplane, in Everett and Renton; and Boeing Space Center Kent, in Kent.

Despite the massive amounts of self-reported polluting by industry, Stier said the state and Gov. Locke have begun to declare that point-source discharges are no longer a problem, and that the main problem is now non-point-source runoff, such as from farms and individual households. Thus, the State Department of Ecology is urging Washingtonians to use fewer toxics at home and in the yard. The message is that individuals are dirtying Washington's water. While private households can improve their behavior, Stier said "it isn't fair" that the biggest and wealthiest polluters "are being let off the hook."

* 636 Washington waterways currently fail the state's water quality standards which WashPIRG claims are too weak to begin with.

* Almost 50% of our salmon runs are on the verge of extinction.

* Many of the compounds in our water present serious hazards to human health and the environment, the report said.

* Some bottom-feeding fish in Washington have shown some reproductive disorders, and discharges from pulp and paper mills have proven harmful to juvenile Chinook.

What is to be done?

At a September 10 press conference on the Seattle waterfront, WashPIRG called on Gov. Locke, the Department of Ecology and the legislature to:

* Strengthen water quality standards and water pollution permits that are currently up for renewal;

* Fully fund and implement the cleanup of the 636 state waterways that fail water quality standards;

* Measure toxic pollutants as they leave the pipe, and stop calculating pollutant amounts after they mix with clean water;

* Require serious or repeat violators of water pollution permits to pay stiff penalties and submit detailed pollution prevention plans.

WashPIRG also urged the federal government to expand right-to know reporting to include toxic chemical use information. "The public is left in the dark about chemicals used in the workplace, transported through communities, and placed in products we buy," the report noted.

The health of people, animals and nature lies in jeopardy if dumping billions of pounds of toxics into the water is "legal" in most instances. The EPA may say that flushing toxics into the sewer system doesn't count, but deformed frogs, soaring breast cancer and childhood cancers, and growing reproductive problems among men and women show that this heavy toxic load on our environment and in our bodies is increasingly denying people the right to physical health.

WashPIRG can be reached at 5200 University Way, NE, Suite 201, Seattle, 98105; or washpirg@mindspring.com; or at http://www.pirg.org/WashPIRG