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COVID-19

Ecology Department will hold two online meetings in place of open house on pollution in Spokane River

State officials have canceled a planned public workshop intended to update residents on changing the rules for discharge of pollutants into the Spokane River, due to restrictions on public gatherings in place because of the coronavirus (Jesse Tinsley / The Spokesman-Review)

State officials have canceled a planned public workshop next Tuesday at Spokane Community College intended to update residents on changing the rules for discharge of pollutants into the Spokane River, due to restrictions on public gatherings in place because of the coronavirus.

The Washington Department of Ecology will instead hold an evening webinar sometime in April as an update to its process of issuing variances to several pollutant dischargers for polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, to take the place of the March 24 meeting. Five entities have sought relief from new federal limits on the chemicals that have been linked to cancer, including the city of Spokane, Spokane County, Kaiser Aluminum, the Liberty Lake Sewer and Water District and Inland Empire Paper.

Inland Empire Paper is owned by the Cowles Co., which also publishes The Spokesman-Review.

At a hearing in Spokane in November, both conservation and industry groups questioned the Ecology Department’s process in issuing the reprieve from a federal standard. Groups such as the Spokane Riverkeeper argue that permitting the variance will allow polluters to continue to discharge harmful chemicals that can be passed through fish eaten from the river, while industries and governments say the standard required cannot be measured with current methods and would require millions of dollars in additional investment to meet.

The Ecology Department plans to make its ruling on the permitted levels for the dischargers later this spring, with final rules to be put in place after an additional public comment period this summer.

The evening webinar will be announced soon. The department had already scheduled an online webinar for March 26 from 2 to 4 p.m. Details on that meeting can be found at the Ecology Department’s website.