Washington Water Pollution Clean-up Program Needs Fixing

The water pollution clean-up program in Washington State is broken.   To fix it, NWEA—for the second time in a week—has had to go to federal court for clean water.  This lawsuit asks the court in Seattle to order the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to fix Washington Department of Ecology’s program that lists waters with unsafe levels of pollution and then develops clean-up plans for those listed waters.  The proper working of this Clean Water Act program is essential to restore Washington’s polluted rivers, streams, and Puget Sound.  

According to the lawsuit, Ecology failed to submit new lists of over-polluted waters to EPA in the years 2014, 2016, and 2018 and submitted an inadequate list in 2012.  EPA has taken no action to fix the violations.

The process of listing waters that violate water quality standards is supposed to take place every two years.  Even though Ecology’s program is very obviously broken, year after year, EPA just sits on the sidelines and does nothing to fix it.  This process of identifying the state’s over-polluted waters is the trigger for pollution controls and without it, polluters keep polluting Washington’s waters with impunity. 

Congress established the Clean Water Act to require EPA to step in when states, such as Washington, fail to do the job.  This lawsuit not only targets Ecology’s failure to submit a list and EPA’s failure to issue its own list.  It also targets the agencies’ failure to list waters that are suffering from unsafe levels of pollution.  For example, despite widely accepted science that toxic contamination is harming Puget Sound orcas, Ecology has listed only a single 2,460 x 3,660 foot rectangle in the middle of Puget Sound for only one toxic chemical (dioxin) on this basis. 

If polluted waters are not properly placed on Washington’s list of impaired waters, no action to clean them up will take place under the Clean Water Act, including permit restrictions and development of clean-up plans.

The legal action taken earlier this week requested the court reopen a 28-year old case to force EPA to develop clean-up plans for waters on this list.  The current list of waters with unsafe levels of pollution—from temperature to toxics— and no clean-up plans stands at 4,548. 

NWEA is represented in this case by James Saul of the Earthrise Law Center at Lewis & Clark Law School and Andrew Hawley of the Western Environmental Law Center.

Back to Top