In brief
Toxin gets blame in hatchery kill
Botulism is suspected in the deaths of 3.5 million chinook salmon smolts at a state fish hatchery on the Columbia River near the Tri-Cities, state officials said Friday.
The 5-month-old fish were the entire stock of Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Ringold Springs Hatchery, about 25 miles north of Richland, and 20 percent of the chinook salmon scheduled for release this year in the upper Columbia River.
Officials were waiting for additional test results, but said preliminary tests showed botulism poisoning was the most likely cause.
“Unless someone were to eat these small fish raw, I really don’t see any human health risk,” said Dr. Maria Leslie, a state Department of Health epidemiologist.
State hatcheries manager John Kerwin said the dead fish will be buried on the hatchery grounds, covered with lime to kill any botulism toxin.
The toxin occurs naturally and has caused several other hatchery fish kills in the past.
– John Craig
Spokane
AMR suit ruled class action
A judge ruled Friday that a lawsuit filed against the ambulance company that serves Spokane should include all of the patients who were overcharged and not just the two people who filed the suit.
Superior Court Judge Jerome Leveque ruled that the case against American Medical Response (AMR) should be certified as a class action.
The lawsuit filed by Spokane attorney D. Roger Reed alleges that AMR engaged in overcharging patients $320,689 over the past two years.
The company has a five-year contract with Spokane that expires in 2008.
The suit claims that AMR charged patients in Spokane the “advanced life support” rate of $480 when they only needed the “basic life support” rate of $348.
In March, AMR executive Randy Strozyk blamed the overbilling on a bookkeeping oversight that occurred when functions were transferred from Spokane to Seattle.
After he filed the suit, Reed said that several more customers contacted him with the same overcharging allegations.
Leveque’s ruling Friday will allow those persons to enter the suit rather than filing several separate lawsuits dealing with the same allegations. The trial is set for next year.
– Thomas Clouse