Epa Faces Suit Over Delay On Limiting Metals In River Environmental Groups Want Limits Set For Spokane River

Two conservation groups have notified the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that they intend to sue over delays in setting limits for heavy metals in the Spokane River.

The pollution limits are a requirement of the nation’s Clean Water Act. Called Total Maximum Daily Loads, they specify the contaminants that mining companies, wastewater treatment plants and other industries can put into the river each day.

The limits were supposed to be set by December 1997, under a court-ordered schedule established to settle a previous lawsuit against the EPA by the Idaho Sportsmen’s Coalition.

Heavy metals in the Spokane River exceed Washington state standards for aquatic life, but do not violate drinking water standards.

On Monday, the EarthJustice Legal Defense Fund in Seattle sent the required 60-day notice to EPA Director Carol Browner on behalf of the Spokane-based Lands Council and the Idaho Conservation League.

Idaho officials haven’t submitted their proposed pollution limits for the Spokane River to the EPA, and the federal agency has failed to act quickly to protect the river, the conservation groups say.

Further delay “violates the letter and spirit of the Clean Water Act and the court’s orders, and poses unacceptable hazards to the citizens and environment of Idaho and Washington,” attorney Patti Goldman wrote in her letter to Browner.

The groups want the EPA to set tougher heavy metal limits for the Spokane River than what Idaho has proposed, said Mark Solomon, executive director of the Lands Council.

“We are still talking to Idaho about making their (pollution) criteria more acceptable,” said Bill Riley, the EPA’s mining coordinator in Seattle.

The standards are doubly important, since they also will be used to help determine the scope of the federal Superfund cleanup of a century of mining waste in the Coeur d’Alene Basin.

Washington officials also have complained to the EPA that the metals limit proposed by Idaho is too lax. It “essentially allocates all of the metal loading capacity of the Spokane River to Idaho without consideration of the impacts to downstream dischargers,” Washington Department of Ecology’s Megan White said in an October 1997 letter to EPA.

Idaho disagrees with that assessment, said Geoff Harvey of the Division of Environmental Quality in Coeur d’Alene.

Idaho’s goal for pollution limits leaves a buffer for heavy metals entering the river in Washington, he said. But that’s only after extensive heavy metal cleanup upstream.

The Coeur d’Alene River Basin Commission has approved the maximum daily loads for the Spokane River and sent them on to DEQ headquarters in Boise, Harvey said. “This is now a Boise decision,” he said.

If the EPA doesn’t like Idaho’s plan, it has 30 days to rewrite it.

This sidebar appeared with the story: WHAT’S NEXT The Coeur d’Alene River Basin Commission has approved the limits for heavy metals in the Spokane River and sent them to Idaho Department of Environmental Quality headquarters in Boise. If the EPA doesn’t like Idaho’s plan, it has 30 days to rewrite it.