A multinational banking giant is backing away from a proposal to build the West Coast’s biggest coal export project near Bellingham, Washington.
New York-based Goldman Sachs has sold its stock back to the companies proposing to build the Gateway Pacific Terminal. If built it would transfer 48 million tons of Wyoming coal each year from trains to ocean-going vessels bound for Asia.
Before the stock transfer, Goldman Sachs had a 49 percent stake in the Gateway Pacific project. The company proposing the project is SSA Marine. Its parent company is Carrix, Inc.
SSA Marine President Bob Watters said in a statement that after Goldman Sachs sold back its stock, a Mexican businessman named Fernando Chico Pardo made an investment in SSA’s parent company that gives him a 49 percent ownership.
Coal-export opponents said the departure of Goldman Sachs as an investor is the latest sign that Wall Street no longer sees a profitable future in mining, shipping and burning coal – considered the dirtiest sources of energy and one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gases that contribute to global climate change.
“Goldman Sachs’ stepping away from coal export is yet another sign from Wall Street that coal export is a losing investment,” said anti-coal activist Crina Hoyer, the executive director of Bellingham-based RE Sources for Sustainable Communities.
SSA Marine and Carrix, Inc., sought to cast the departure of Goldman Sachs in a more positive light. According to their press release, Chico Pardo and the project’s original investors had stepped in with a “substantial capital injection” and remained committed to the coal export project.
Overall, the push to export Montana and Wyoming coal through the Pacific Northwest’s has struggled. Of the six coal export terminal originally proposed in Washington and Oregon, three have been dropped. In addition to the Gateway Pacific terminal on the northern shore of Puget Sound, the two other terminals still being considered are proposed for ports on the Columbia River in Washington and Oregon.
Seattle-based SSA Marine wants to build a terminal within the Cherry Point Aquatic Reserve. It would ship millions of tons of coal from Montana and Wyoming to Asia. The company says it would create thousands of jobs and generate millions in tax and other revenues.
Players: SSA Marine, Peabody Energy, Gateway Pacific, Korea East-West Power
Full Capacity: To be reached in 2026
Export Plans: 48 million tons/year
Train: 18 trains/day (9 full and 9 empty)
Train Cars: 1,370/day
Vessels: 487/year
What’s Next: Environmental review of the project is expected to take two years. In July 2013, Washington Department of Ecology, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Whatcom County, Wash. announced they will consider climate change, human health and the environment. They will also look at the entire route from Western mines to coal-burning plants in Asia. The public’s input was a factor in the decision for a broad review. Government agencies took in public comments from close to 125,000 people from September, 2012 to January, 2013. As part of the public-input process, 9,000 people attended seven meetings in Washington in 2012. The government agencies are required to solicit public input before they issue an environmental impact statement and from there, approve development permits. A summary of the public comment can be found here.
Time was when the salmon ran so thick you could walk on their backs to cross the river.
That’s how the elders tell it.
Then came the dams. The dams cut off key points in salmon migration, preventing the mighty fish from returning to their birthplace to spawn future generations. It was obvious to the indigenous experts that this was going to affect not only the well being of the fish species but also of the entire forest—and ultimately, of the tribes themselves.
But now, 100 years later, Turtle Island’s Indigenous Peoples are using that same knowledge to restore the habitat. Northwestern tribes have toiled for decades to stop the degradation of salmon habitat and bring back the fish’s numbers.
The video below looks at the efforts of the Yakama Nation and its innovative programs. It was recently posted to the site of the website Washington Tribes, dedicated to disseminating information about the ways in which the state’s 29 tribes contribute to the economy, business, environment and many other areas. The site’s environment page is a treasure trove of examples of how other indigenous nations in the Northwest have toiled in similar, parallel efforts as well.
Photo courtesy Howard Garrett / Orca Network, June Members of L pod, one of the Salish Sea’s resident orca pods, heads north up Boundary Pass to Georgia Strait.
Forty years after the passage of the federal Endangered Species Act, the state and Snohomish County remain squarely on the edge of that preservation frontier.
More than 40 animal species in Washington are listed by the federal government as either endangered or threatened under the law, signed by President Richard Nixon on Dec. 28, 1973. Many others are listed as species of concern.
Among creatures found in waters in and around Snohomish and Island counties, seven species of fish or marine mammals are listed under the act.
Of the local fish species and orcas, salmon and bull trout were listed in 1999, the killer whales in 2005 and the other fish species in 2010.
Reasons cited for the decline of the fish are many, including pollution, overfishing and loss of habitat. In the case of killer whales, dwindling supply of their diet staple — chinook salmon — is a major contributing factor, officials say.
Supporters claim many success stories for the Endangered Species Act, with bald eagles and peregrine falcons among the more prominent examples.
Gray whales were taken off the list in 1994 and steller sea lions just this year.
According to U.S. Fish and Wildlife, 99 percent of the hundreds of species listed since the Endangered Species Act became law have been prevented from going extinct.
The law protects species by preventing them from being harmed or captured and by regulating human activity in their habitat areas.
Perhaps the best feature of the Endangered Species Act, some say, is that it keeps the species’ problems in the public spotlight.
“It has pulled people together to talk about what to do,” said Daryl Williams, environmental liaison for the Tulalip Tribes.
Recovery for many species, however, is slow and not guaranteed.
“Listing is a way of sort of planning for recovery, if you will,” said Brent Norberg, a marine mammal biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service in Seattle.
The southern resident orca population, for example, had 88 whales in 2004, the year before it was listed under the ESA. The population now is down to 80, according to the Orca Network, a Whidbey Island-based group that tracks the whales.
“Because they’re so long-lived and their recruitment is so slow and their numbers are so small, it’s going to be quite a lengthy process,” Norberg said.
William Ruckleshaus, the first director of the Environmental Protection Agency under Nixon in the early 1970s, is 81 and lives in Medina.
The EPA was created and Endangered Species Act was passed after pollution and declines in species had reached alarming levels, Ruckleshaus said. The Cuyahoga River in northeast Ohio, for example, famously caught fire in 1969.
“The public demanded something be done about it and the president responded,” he said.
He said the endangered species law might have overreached.
“We passed laws that promised levels of perfection that probably weren’t possible. It’s hard to do it, to be honest with you,” Ruckleshaus said. The law has been refined over time, he said.
Among those stories is perhaps the most high-profile recovery: the national symbol, the bald eagle.
The eagle’s numbers in the 48 contiguous states declined from roughly 100,000 in the early 19th century to only 487 nesting pairs in 1963, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife website.
Several measures were taken to help the eagle, beginning with the 1940 Bald Eagle Protection Act, which made it illegal to kill an eagle. The pesticide DDT, found to have thinned the eggshells of eagles and other birds, was banned in 1972.
Still, “listing the species as endangered provided the springboard” for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to accelerate recovery through captive breeding, law enforcement and nest-site protection, according to the agency’s website
Bald eagles rebounded and they now number about 10,000. The eagles were taken off the list in 2007.
The Endangered Species Act’s effect on salmon is not so clear, the Tulalips say.
Development that destroys habitat is not restricted enough to offset the losses, Williams said.
“We’re still losing habitat faster than we’re gaining it from restoration,” he said.
The problem is inconsistency in rules among various agencies involved in environmental protection, said Terry Williams, fisheries and natural resources commissioner for the tribes.
Also, because of the ESA, some habitat restoration projects have to jump through the same hoops as other construction, causing delays in measures that could help fish, Daryl Williams said.
“I kind of have mixed feelings about it,” he said.
Those restrictions may be a necessary evil, said Norberg, of the fisheries service.
For example, if creosote-soaked logs are being removed from a waterway, if it’s not done properly, it could result in creosote finding its way back into the water, “so it does as much harm as it does good,” he said.
Restrictions also can affect landowners’ use of their property. This not only angers some property owners but can defeat the intent of the law, said Todd Myers, environmental director for the Washington Policy Center, a right-leaning think tank in Seattle.
Because the law governs use of land where a listed species is found, some landowners take steps to eliminate habitat for a species on their property so it won’t be seen there, Myers said.
“You get a regulatory stick that puts landowners at odds with habitat recovery,” he said.
A better way, he said, is to reimburse landowners for measures taken to preserve or promote habitat, he said.
“That at least takes a step toward making a landowner a partner as opposed to an opponent.”
Despite the ESA’s flaws, “it is working well in terms of bringing all the various parties together to talk and to plan accordingly,” Norberg said.
The decline of the salmon might not be reversed without it, Ruckelshaus said.
“It is an extraordinarily complex problem,” he said. “But for the ESA I doubt we would have paid the attention to it we have, and I think that is absolutely necessary for it to recover.”
LINDSEY WASSON / The Seattle Times Enri Mendoza, left, and Daniel Sandoval, sort geoduck at Taylor Shellfish Farms in Shelton last week. China, the biggest market for West Coast geoduck, suspended shellfish imports from Northern California to Alaska on Dec. 3 after toxins were detected in two shipments.
China’s suspension of geoduck imports from the West Coast has hit Washington harvesters hard. Tribes, private companies and the state itself are losing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
On a typical morning, Lief Cofield and his three crew members pile into a 30-foot aluminum boat to harvest hundreds of pounds of geoduck clams.
But for more than two weeks, his boat, the Eagle Scout, has been tied to the dock at Fair Harbor Marina in North Bay, near Shelton — the dive suits stored, the equipment stashed and the crew stuck on land.
“We are supposed to be harvesting 1,500 pounds a day this week,” said Cofield, 26, who is a dive supervisor at Taylor Shellfish Farms in Shelton. “My guys make $15 an hour plus a 10- to 15-cent per-pound bonus on what they personally harvest; and that can really add up.”
His crew is not alone. Since Dec. 3, when seafood inspectors in China suspended imports of West Coast geoduck and other bivalve shellfish such as oysters after reporting high levels of algae toxin or arsenic, harvesters along tribal, state and private shorelines have all been hit.
Altogether, the state produces more than 6 million pounds of geoduck clams annually, and last year almost 90 percent was sold to China.
But now, tribal harvesting companies have laid off divers. Geoduck farms have reduced hours for many workers, and wild-geoduck divers all around Puget Sound are out of work.
LINDSEY WASSON / The Seattle Times Geoduck are seen in a crate awaiting shipment. Since China’s import cutoff, quotas have fallen drastically.
Meanwhile, the state is missing out on well over $1 million in revenue from the wild harvest. Washington auctions off rights to harvest geoduck on state aquatic lands; this year those rights were worth about $12 a pound.
“We only fished two days last week,” said Cendtary Xeno, a geoduck diver for Global Pacific Seafood. “Everyone has bills to pay and families, and lack of work at the holiday time is pretty bad.”
Currently, state and federal agencies are waiting to get more information from Chinese officials, and the Department of Health is preparing to start testing arsenic levels on Thursday.
While the investigation is ongoing, geoduck harvesting in Washington is essentially at a standstill.
According to the Washington Department of Natural Resources, an average of 50,000 pounds of wild geoduck are harvested weekly by divers such as Xeno, with Global Pacific.
With almost 1.1 million pounds of state-regulated wild geoduck left to harvest before March 31, the department estimates the current ban represents not only lost income for fishermen, but also $600,000 per week in lost revenue for the state.
Some tribes and companies have already completed their harvests for the year. But those who have not are missing out on millions of dollars’ worth of product that would have been shipped to China.
Suquamish Seafoods, run by that tribe, exports almost all of its geoduck to China, and has laid off all 24 of its divers.
The tribe still had 140,000 pounds of geoduck to harvest before the end of the season in March. If the ban is not lifted soon, divers may not be able to finish harvesting, said Tony Forsman, the company’s general manager.
The tribe was selling geoduck for $11.50 a pound before the ban took effect, so the Suquamish Tribe could potentially lose out on more than $1.6 million worth of clams.
Divers receive 40 percent of the take for the geoduck they harvest, meaning each diver is at a risk of losing $67,000 — a large portion of their annual income — right before the holiday season, said George Hill, the harvest coordinator and a diver for Suquamish Seafoods.
“You can’t think about Christmas when you have to think of next month’s bills,” Hill said. “We have bills to pay, and not knowing when we are going to go back to work is very hard on us.”
To make up for the lost income, the 47-year-old Hill, who has five children, may look for a diving job harvesting sea cucumber. He hopes the ban can be lifted in time for the tribe to finish harvesting this year’s quota.
Seattle Shellfish, a company that farms only geoduck and ships exclusively to China, has shifted its 18 divers to other duties, such as geoduck farm maintenance, since they are not currently harvesting the giant clam.
Taylor Shellfish Farms, one of the largest geoduck providers in the state, ships only half of its harvested geoduck to China, which means there is still some work to be done. However, many employees have been moved to half-time and have been given other tasks, company spokesman Bill Dewey said.
Both farms say they will have to consider layoffs if the ban continues much longer.
At the Taylor plant in Shelton, holding tanks are usually packed full of thousands of pounds of live, freshly harvested geoduck. Starting at 11 a.m. each day, the four-man geoduck team, led by Gustavo Hernandez, has to work quickly to sort and pack all the clams before the first truck leaves for the airport at 4 p.m.
Last Thursday, the men raised the lid on the holding tank and stared down at the measly 1,000 pounds of geoduck, stacked in orange crates, that had been beach-harvested the night before. They didn’t start packing and sorting until 2 p.m. and were in no hurry.
“This is usually the busiest time of year,” said Hernandez, 35. “But without exporting to China, we just don’t have a lot to do.”
Geoducks first caught on as a banquet delicacy in Hong Kong, and the clams’ appeal has spread to other parts of China.
Geoduck harvesters, the state Department of Health, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) all have been scrambling to understand the suspension.
Fish inspectors in China identified high levels of arsenic and a toxin that causes paralytic shellfish poisoning, or PSP, in two shipments of geoduck — one from Washington and one from Alaska.
Friday, state and tribal officials closed the 135-acre geoduck harvesting area outside Federal Way where the Washington geoduck shipment originated.
The 385-pound shipment was harvested by the Puyallup Tribe in Poverty Bay, on what the Department of Natural Resources calls the Redondo Tract.
PSP is a biotoxin produced by algae that shellfish eat. In humans, high levels of either PSP or arsenic can lead to severe illness or even death.
However, testing in October by the Department of Health found PSP levels in the Redondo Tract well below internationally accepted limits.
Because there is no federal safety standard in place for arsenic, the last arsenic testing done in the area was in 2007. Levels found at that time were not of concern for human health, according to an agency spokesman.
The Department of Health originally had focused on investigating PSP levels, but last week the agency learned the Washington shipment was blocked because of arsenic, while PSP was the issue with the shipment from Alaska.
“The last thing I would want to have happen is for someone to get sick,” said Cofield, from Taylor Shellfish. “But closing down the whole West Coast because of two shipments seems a little heavy-handed.”
The Alaska shipment of geoduck originated from outside Ketchikan, and that state has also provided federal agencies with detailed reports, said Jerry Borchert, the marine biotoxin coordinator with the Washington Department of Health shellfish program.
Borchert said China uses a different unit of measure when reporting PSPs, and officials here don’t know how Chinese inspectors tested the arsenic levels. “So we don’t know how they came up with the level they have reported,” Borchert said.
“We are full of questions and are looking for some answers,” he said. “We are waiting for more details.”
NOAA, the federal agency working directly with the Chinese, sent a report with the health department’s PSP findings to Chinese officials, along with questions about how the toxicity levels were measured. Federal officials also are awaiting more information from China, and it is still unknown when the ban might be lifted.
Information from The Seattle Times archive was used in this report.
Coral Garnick: 206-464-2422 or cgarnick@seattletimes.com. On Twitter @coralgarnick
Andy Bronson/Bellingham Herald Lummi’s Deion Hoskins misses Neah Bay’s Josiah Greene in the 1B Washington State Football semifinal game at the Tacoma Dome last month.
Neah Bay High School and Lummi Nation High School are rival Native high schools in Washington State. But they have a few more things in common.
Neah Bay won the Washington State 1A Football Championship this fall for the second time in three years; Lummi Nation won it in 2010, and has made it to State several years in a row.
Lummi High has about 100 students and Neah Bay Jr./Sr. High has about 168 and because of these small enrollment numbers, 8-man football is preferred for these rival schools over the traditional version of that varsity sport.
“There is no difference as far as the rules,” said Lummi Nation Head Coach Jim Sandusky. “There are three less guys on the field, so instead of seven guys on the line, you have to have at least five. That’s pretty much it.”
Lummi Nation is a tribal school located just a few miles from the Canadian line. Neah Bay, a state school, is located on the northwestern tip of Washington. Both football teams came into prominence in recent years and their proximity to each other has created a friendly rivalry.
And arguably, the success at each school can be traced back to the two coaches: Tony McCaulley at Neah Bay and Sandusky at Lummi Nation.
Sandusky, a Colville descendent, coached Ferndale youth football. He built a football field on his own property because there was no place for the football players to practice. His son Rocky was on the youth team that he coached, as well as Jake Locker, now quarterback for the Tennessee Titans in the NFL.
In 2003, Sandusky was hired as Lummi’s coach and athletic director. That year, they went 4-5 and missed the playoffs in the last game of the season. “Ever since [2004], we’ve made it,” said Sandusky, explaining that the team has made it to the playoffs every year since then.
McCaulley’s coaching career was somewhat similar to Sandusky’s. His son Ty started youth football and McCaulley coached him. He coached and played at Clallam Bay, a rival school just down the road from Neah Bay. He’s been coaching Red Devils for six years.
“We’ve been to the state semi-finals five of the six years. The worst year I had [was when] we lost in the state quarter-finals,” McCaulley said. But, Neah Bay was dominant this year. “We were undefeated and blew a lot of teams out,” McCaulley said.
Many of the Red Devils players have played together since eighth grade and all but one of the 39 players are Makah tribal members. Two players in particular are looking to play college football next year. One is the coach’s son, Ty, who plays fullback and the other is Josiah Greene, the quarterback.
At Lummi, only a few players have been on that team since 8th grade. “Dean Hoskins started for me ever since he was an 8th grader,” Sandusky said. “He just got All-State selection along with two other of our kids.”
Note the similarities: Each community had youth football programs with fathers coaching the kids. Sandusky and McCaulley were then hired by the schools to coach high school football. Since those two coaches have taken over, each program has had rather remarkable success: high ratios of wins to losses, and state championship wins with teams made up almost entirely of Native American players.
If Jake Locker can make it to the pros, then why not Ty or Josiah or Dean or Rocky or one of the other outstanding 8-man Native American high school football players.
That night she finished ahead of Jennifer Smolen of Marysville and Deborah Parker of Tulalip in the final round of balloting by the district’s precinct committee officers.
County Council members interviewed the three nominees before voting 5-0 to install Robinson in the $42,106-a-year job representing residents in Everett, Tulalip and a slice of Marysville.
Smolen, an Iraq war veteran, worked as an aide for state Sen. Steve Hobbs in 2011 and then for Snohomish County Councilwoman Stephanie Wright in late 2011 and early 2012.
Parker is the elected vice chairwoman of the Tulalip Tribes. She formerly worked as legislative policy analyst for the tribes.
Republican Councilman John Koster, a former state lawmaker, praised the talents of the three women, calling them “the best group of people we’ve ever interviewed” for a political appointment.
“This was probably one of the most difficult decisions this council has had,” he said.
Councilman Brian Sullivan, a Democrat and another onetime legislator, described the trio as an “an all-star cast.”
And Councilman Dave Somers, also a Democrat, said the three women are shining examples of public service and each would be a star in the Legislature.
Robinson has spent her career involved in programs dealing with human services and community health care. She told the council she would like to serve on House committees that deal with those issues.
She’s worked as a program manager for King County Public Health since 2012 and said she’ll take a leave of absence when the Legislature begins its 60-day regular session in January.
She formerly served as executive director of the Housing Consortium of Everett and Snohomish County which focuses on expanding affordable housing in the community.
She also is a member of the city of Everett’s Salary Commission and its Human Needs Committee. And she is on the steering committee of the Northwest Neighborhood Association.
Robinson ran unsuccessfully for Everett City Council in 2011 and 2012. She had been seeking an open seat on the council until Sen. Nick Harper resigned in early November.
When it seemed clear either McCoy or state Rep. Mike Sells, D-Everett, would be chosen to fill Harper’s seat, she ended her council pursuit to focus on securing whichever seat opened. She said a number of people encouraged her to do so, including House Speaker Frank Chopp, D-Seattle.
Robinson is married and has two sons who are both in college.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service relocated 37 deer to the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge 60 miles away and brimming with prime habitat.
Now, those efforts are paying off.
In its five-year review of the deer, the service is recommending the Columbian white-tailed deer be downgraded from an endangered species to a threatened one.
That’s one step closer – in a long series of steps – to removing the deer from the endangered species list. However, the recommendation is only that, a recommendation, which is not always taken.
But biologists are pretty confident that the Columbian white-tailed deer will one day be fully recovered.
“Finally after 40 years, with this particular population segment in the Columbia River, we really are on the right track. Things are going to move quickly from here,” said Rebecca Toland, a wildlife biologist with the service.
Ten years ago, the service removed another Columbian white-tailed deer population in Oregon from the endangered species list. Biologists say that shows, given the right conditions, the Columbian white-tailed deer can make their way off the list.
“There’s a precedence for recovering and reclassifying and, ultimately, delisting under the endangered species act. But particularly for this species. There is a track record of the service doing that when warranted,” said Chris Allen, fisheries biologist with the service.
If Washington’s population is downgraded to a threatened species, the doors are opened up for more biologists and wildlife managers to work to protect the deer. Under federal law, there are many research restrictions when a species is classified as endangered. The threatened classification loosens those restrictions.
The service had several specific goals for the Columbian white-tailed deer to meet:
A minimum of 400 deer across the Columbia River population;
Three groups of at least 50 deer living in three different locations;
Two of those three groups had to be on protected, secure habitat.
Now, Toland said, biologists can put a check mark next to each of those items.
After biologists moved deer away from the eroding dike in southwestern Washington, the new Ridgefield population has begun to flourish, Toland said. Biologists have spotted two fawns at the refuge.
“They’re taking to the habitat,” Toland said. “It’s supporting them, and they’re finding enough cover and forage, and the things that they need in their new home. It’s always a challenge moving species to a completely new environment that they’re not familiar with.”
The dike near the Julia Butler Hansen Refuge is also being repaired. A one-mile setback dike was built this fall to prevent the refuge from flooding if the dike were to burst. Parts of the old dike will be removed next year, which will restore tidal connection and fish access to the refuge.
The service will likely decide whether to accept this recommendation in 2014. If the downgrade is officially proposed the public will then be able to comment.
Millennium Bulk Terminals has proposed to export 44 million tons of coal per year through this site in Longview, Wash. | credit: Courtesy of Millennium Bulk Terminals | rollover image for more
More than 195,000 public comments have flooded the environmental review of the Millennium coal export terminal proposed for Longview, Wash.
That’s the number of letters, emails, and statements read aloud at public meetings as of Friday. It exceeds the 125,000 comments agencies received on the environmental review of the Gateway Pacific coal export project in Bellingham, Wash., earlier this year.
Monday was the deadline for the public to comment on the Millennium project during this phase of the environmental review. The total could climb even higher with the addition of comments post-marked Nov. 18, according to Linda Kent, spokeswoman for the Washington Department of Ecology. People can read all the comments online.
Ecology is one of three agencies taking comments on which environmental impacts they should study before permitting begins along with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Cowlitz County. Kent said her agency hasn’t set a timeline for reviewing all the comments.
“Obviously this is a large number of comments to review, so there is really not a specific set time frame,” she said. “We’re going to be doing that as effectively and efficiently as we can.”
The Millennium project would export 44 million tons of coal from Wyoming and Montana to Asia. It would receive coal by rail at a terminal in Longview, Wash., and transfer it onto vessels.
Many people have asked the agencies to consider the health impacts of coal dust and diesel emissions along the delivery route.
On Sunday, 160 Oregon and Washington physicians submitted comments asking the agencies to do a health impact assessment of the project as part of their environmental reviews.
Regna Merritt of the Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility says that makes for a total of 3,000 health professionals and advocates who have made similar requests in comments on the Millennium project.
Merritt said the comments submitted Sunday mirror those of a group called the Whatcom Docs, who asked for a health impact assessment on the Gateway Pacific coal export project in Bellingham.
Ecology announced earlier this year it would consider the health impacts in its environmental review of that coal export project.
“At the very least we need the same consideration for Longview,” Merritt said.
OLYMPIA – Legislators grappled Thursday with a seemingly small question that has a big impact on Washington’s pollution laws: How much fish do people eat?
The answer will affect water pollution standards on many state waterways and the companies that must meet those standards because some of the pollution ends up in fish. How much fish people eat can determine the risk for some cancers and other diseases.
The question is more complicated than it sounds, Kelly Susewind of the Department of Ecology told the Senate Energy, Environment and Telecommunications Committee. Some groups, particularly Native Americans, eat more fish than others, and some people don’t eat any. Fish that spend their entire lives in a polluted river like the Spokane pick up more pollution than salmon, which are born in fresh water, live in salt water for much of their lives, then return to fresh water. Salmon that spend most of their lives in the Puget Sound can have as much as five times the polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs, a known carcinogen, as salmon that spawn in coastal streams and live most of their lives in the Pacific.
So a person who only eats the highly touted Copper River salmon, which comes from Alaska and is only available a short time each year, would have less risk than someone who eats salmon from Puget Sound? asked Committee Chairman Doug Erickson, R-Ferndale. Yes, Susewind said, but the standards aren’t being set to take that into account.
There is no statewide study of how much fish people eat and where it comes from, so the department is primarily using studies of tribes that primarily eat locally caught fish, he said.
Recent surveys indicate people on the Colville Confederated Tribes reservation eat about 400 grams of fish a day, Gary Passmore, the tribes’ environmental trust director, said Wednesday at a conference in Spokane. Rates are similar for tribal and nontribal members.
Current state pollution standards assume people eat 6.5 grams of fish per day. That’s a piece about the size of a saltine cracker, said Sen. Marilyn Chase, D-Shoreline. The department is considering the effects of assuming they eat 125 grams, about a quarter pound; 175 grams, about a third of a pound; or 225 grams, about a half pound, and estimating the potential increase in cancers.
Some senators worried businesses that currently meet pollution levels set to a consumption of 6.5 grams per day could struggle to reduce their pollution levels at those higher rates. Erickson said the higher rates would put Washington at a “competitive disadvantage with South Carolina for manufacturing” – a not-so-veiled reference to fears that Boeing would build new factories or move existing ones to that state if fish consumption rates get set too high. South Carolina’s estimate is 17.5 grams per day, but each state’s geography, waterways and consumption patterns are different, Susewind said.
But Chase said the state should set standards that protect future generations: “I’m offended to think we would hold our water-quality standards hostage to manufacturers.”
Boeing isn’t the only company closely watching the fish consumption rate debate. Inland Empire Paper Co., which is owned by the same company that owns The Spokesman-Review, spokesman.com and KHQ-TV, could also be affected by a higher rate. So could Spokane city and county, which struggle with PCB pollution in wastewater and storm runoff.
There’s no proposed legislation yet for new standards. At Wednesday’s conference in Spokane, Rick Eichstaedt, attorney for Spokane Riverkeeper, said the state has a history of continued delay on more accurate fish consumption rates, which he called a civil rights and environmental justice issue.
“It’s not OK to force a higher cancer rate on Native Americans, persons of color or the poor,” who eat more fish than the general public, he said.
An alliance of environmental groups and commercial fishing interests filed a federal lawsuit last month to force the federal government to make the state update its consumption rates and comply with the Clean Water Act. That puts more pressure on the EPA to get involved if the Legislature continues to delay.
