State Department, state officials discuss pollution
U.S. State Department officials were in Spokane on Monday to discuss Canadian firm Teck Cominco Ltd.’s massive Columbia River pollution with state officials.
It’s the first time the tight-lipped diplomats have had face-to-face talks with officials in the regional office of the Department of Ecology. The state officials support the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund order to the Canadian company to start paying for studies and an eventual cleanup of millions of tons of slag and heavy metals that have been dumped from Cominco’s Trail, B.C., smelter into the Columbia for decades.
State Department officials barred a reporter from attending the briefing.
The State Department officials here this week include Terry Breese, director of the Office of Canadian Affairs; Nancy Nelson, environment officer; and Jeff Fisher, a department biologist. They plan to tour Lake Roosevelt today and meet with the Colville Confederated Tribes and the Spokane Indian Tribe on Wednesday.
The diplomats, representing the Bush administration, have been meeting behind closed doors in Washington, D.C., and Ottawa for a year over the contentious transboundary pollution dispute. According to some of their correspondence, they have sought to temper EPA’s unilateral cleanup order to Teck Cominco.
This summer, Paul Cellucci, the U.S. Ambassador to Canada and a former Republican governor of Massachusetts, told EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt in a letter that he opposed a Superfund cleanup for Lake Roosevelt. The reason: opposition from U.S. mining and electric utilities who fear Canada and Mexico would retaliate against them for cross-border air and water pollution.
And in a Sept. 14 letter to the government of Canada, Breese said the Bush administration may be willing to settle for a bilateral, mediated solution.
At the start of Monday’s meeting in Spokane, State Department delegation leader Breese said the press was “absolutely not” welcome at the interagency briefing. The decision to close the meeting was the State Department’s call, said Department of Ecology Director Linda Hoffman, who attended the two-hour session.
While no final decisions were made and nothing is yet in writing, the State Department agreed to give Washington an ongoing consultative role in the diplomatic discussions with Canada, Hoffman said. Gov. Gary Locke had requested that role earlier this year.
Ecology still backs EPA’s Superfund order as the best way to clean up Lake Roosevelt, Hoffman added.
“We feel the lake lies wholly within Washington’s borders, we are a trustee and our state interests are best met under Superfund. We don’t support a bilateral process that gives Canada equal status,” she said.
Meanwhile, Washington will continue to pursue litigation over the cleanup with the Colvilles, Hoffman added.
The Spokane Tribe protested to the State Department after tribal officials read of Breese’s Sept. 14 letter to Canada in the newspaper, said tribal attorney Shannon Work.
“We were surprised the State Department sent that letter to Canada before consulting with us. We are a separate government and our relationship with the federal government demands government-to-government consultation on any issue. That (complaint) was heard by the State Department, and they are now reaching out,” Work said.
On Sept. 28, the Colvilles also wrote to the State Department, demanding to see the Canadian government’s confidential proposal to resolve the international dispute.
Meanwhile, the battle over Teck Cominco’s responsibility for polluting the upper Columbia and Lake Roosevelt has moved to the federal courts after a Superfund citizens’ lawsuit was filed by two Colville leaders in an effort to enforce EPA’s cleanup order.
On Nov. 8, U.S. District Court Judge Alan McDonald refused to dismiss the Colvilles’ suit at the request of lawyers for Teck Cominco. The legal issue of whether a Canadian company is subject to U.S. Superfund law will now be heard by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.