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EPA to Help Washington Live Up to its Agreement to Restore Water Quality

Release Date: 10/7/1998
Contact Information: Julie Hagensen
[email protected]
(360) 753-9437

98-53 - - - - - - - - - - October 7, 1998 
         
                                         
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans  to help the Washington Department of Ecology  live up to its agreement to restore the water quality of more than 660 segments of lakes, rivers, streams and marine waters in Washington.

EPA’s assistance was announced today  by Julie Hagensen, director of EPA’s Washington operations office in Olympia.  

"Financial constraints on the Department of Ecology threaten the ability of Ecology to get done on schedule the job of setting pollutant loading allocations for the 666 impaired water segments throughout the state," Hagensen said.   "EPA’s resources are not without limit, but our agency does have enough personnel to develop load allocations for a few water bodies to help get the momentum going."

Hagensen said that EPA will be developing load allocations for at least two of the following six candidate waters because of known or suspected pollution problems.

     COUNTY           WATER BODY         THE PROBLEM

• King County:     Lake Sammamish    Fecal coliform bacteria, nutrients
• Pierce County    Lake Steilacoom   Nutrients, copper
• Pacific County:  Willapa River     Depletion of dissolved oxygen
• Okanogan County: Okanogan River    Fecal coliform bacteria
• Grant County:    Lower Crab Creek  Pesticides
• Whitman County:  Hangman Creek     Depletion of dissolved oxygen

Hagensen said that pollution problems can manifest themselves in ways that directly affect local communities.  As an example she cited the closure this past summer of several Seattle-area beaches because of fecal coliform contamination.  

Ecology agreed to develop the load allocations for the 666 water segments when Ecology, EPA, the Northwest Environmental Advocates and the Northwest Environmental Defense Center settled a lawsuit field by the two environmental organizations against Ecology and EPA.  The plaintiffs said Ecology and EPA had not met a requirement of the federal Clean Water Act that called for the establishment of Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDL’s) for bodies of water that do not meet prescribed water quality standards.

To develop a TMDL, Hagensen explained, it is necessary to determine how much of a certain pollutant a body of water can receive without violating water quality standards.   Once that limit is determined, then it’s a matter of  allocating how much of that pollutant each contributor is allowed to discharge into the water body.

When the lawsuit was settled last winter, Ecology agreed to set TMDL’s for all 666 bodies of water by 2013 if it received sufficient funding from the state legislature to carry out the agreement.  Those funds did not materialize in the last session.  Although many water quality studies are underway,  Ecology since the settlement has developed 23 TMDL’s for 10 bodies of water.