Idaho Wants Warmer Trout Streams State Disputes Rules Based On Epa Data
Idaho is proposing new rules for bull trout streams to allow warmer stream conditions than the federal government said were necessary earlier this year.
Idaho environmental officials will present their proposal to the Idaho Health and Welfare Board today.
The standards are less stringent than those established by the Environmental Protection Agency in July. The bull trout is a candidate species for protection under the Endangered Species Act.
“We have a difference in how we read the technical literature,” said Larry Koenig of Idaho’s Division of Environmental Quality.
The EPA standards, developed in consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, call for a maximum temperature of 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit) in bull trout streams during the months of June through September.
Idaho’s proposed standards call for a daily average temperature of 12 degrees Celsius from June through August, and a 9 degrees Celsius average temperature during September and October.
If the Health and Welfare Board approves the standards, the proposal then will go to the EPA for approval.
“Idaho’s presented us with new information,” said Tim Hamlin of the EPA. “I don’t know if that information is compelling enough to go with 12 (degrees Celsius).”
The standards came about as a result of an Idaho Conservation League and an Idaho Sporting Congress lawsuit charging that the EPA wasn’t enforcing the Clean Water Act.
The ICL plans to protest Idaho’s proposed standards at Monday’s meeting, charging that the standards are weak and provide loopholes for logging, mining, grazing and development. The ICL also wants the standards to apply to more waters than now are proposed.
The state standards allow stream temperature to be increased by 1/2 a degree if “socially and economically” justified. They also allow the director of DEQ to waive or raise bull trout temperature based on a technical review that shows bull trout don’t use a particular stream or could survive in higher temperatures.
, DataTimes