Stewardship, decisive action needed to clean up fouled river

Phosphorus, PCBs, PBDEs, dioxin, heavy metals – all this sounds like a bad science experiment. In reality, though, it is just part of the list of the pollutants that contaminate our Spokane River. For a century, we treated the Spokane River as a source of waterpower and as a dumping ground for our mining, industrial and municipal waste. Not surprisingly, our river grew sicker as pollution ran virtually unchecked into the Spokane River. Ironically, our polluted river is also the cultural icon for our region and used repeatedly to promote our “Near Nature, Near Perfect” image.

A river this polluted deserves real leadership in bringing it back to health. For too long, those responsible for stewarding us toward river recovery have been unwilling or unable to implement a real plan to clean up the myriad of river water quality problems. We need leadership to promptly address all the river’s problems and restore its environmental, cultural and economic value.

It has taken a decade for the Washington Department of Ecology and the federal Environmental Protection Agency to develop a plan to address just a small piece of the problem facing the Spokane River – low levels of oxygen in Lake Spokane caused by excessive amounts of phosphorus and other nutrients. This process has been the poster child of what happens when science is influenced by politics, to the detriment of the environment. Perhaps the best example was the ridiculous assumption that once pollution crosses the state line, it somehow becomes natural and not human-caused.

During this time, little on-the-ground or in-the-river action has occurred to actually improve the river’s health. At the same time, we learned things may actually be worse than initially thought. Our native trout population is shrinking dangerously, the river has the highest levels of toxic flame retardants in the state, and summer water flows decrease as demand increases and climate change provides more drought-like conditions.

Despite all of the pollution problems facing the Spokane River, there is some hope for the future. Many of the flaws in the previous efforts to clean up the phosphorus problem are being addressed – EPA and Ecology are actually considering impacts from both sides of the state line and Avista agreed to look at and address the impacts of Long Lake Dam on water quality. If all goes well, our community may have a plan to address this small piece of the problem by next year.

However, let’s not pat EPA or the Department of Ecology on the back for conducting something that is a long time coming. Let’s welcome it as a healthy step into the future, but always remember that the river suffered for years with little action from those charged to save it.

This leaves the state to start addressing a much more difficult and harmful pollutant – PCBs. PCBs are a mix of chemicals that were banned in the late 1970s because they are harmful to humans and fish. PCBs are discharged into the Spokane River virtually every time it rains, and very little is being done at the state or local level to address PCBs.

Cleaning up our river requires effective environmental stewardship consisting of a combination of education, individual and corporate responsibility, citizen involvement (including participation in the voting process and volunteering to support local conservation groups), coalition building, and development and enforcement of federal and state environmental laws.

What does this mean? First and foremost, we need leaders who want to invest in cleaning up our river because it’s good for the health of our community. This means taking actions that encourage an expeditious cleanup rather than foster further delay and controversy. This means rethinking whether it makes sense to dump wastewater into our river and considering whether it is time to develop a green infrastructure for utilization of that wastewater for beneficial uses like irrigating golf courses or industrial processes. We need to be aggressive about conservation by increasing incentive programs to include upgrades to lawn irrigation (one of the biggest draws of water during the summer) and requiring low-impact developments. This also means taking a holistic look at river health and addressing the impacts of multiple pollutants at the same time in order to maximize how limited wastewater treatment technology dollars are spent.

We are a long way from reaching the goal of a clean Spokane River. But it is clear that we need leaders who are willing to take action now that gets us heading in the right direction.