Winter 2025 Newsletter

The Winter 2025 Newsletter

Distressing Times

There is no getting around it: these are very distressing times. When you no longer recognize your country, perhaps the ongoing inertia of agencies’ failing to protect the environment seems less important than it used to. But really, it is the same crippling corruption that puts public health and the environment after profits . . . just now on steroids.

In our lawsuits, NWEA persistently tackles the fairytale that our government is doing everything required by law to protect endangered salmon. Our cases build on the simple fact that the only way to give our region’s cold-water species a chance is to surround streams with deep shade.

We advocate in our unique way to keep trees standing and get new ones planted.

The other fairytale we challenge is that agencies are doing everything the law requires to protect Puget Sound and its beleaguered killer whales. Nothing could be further from the truth.

We greatly appreciate your support for our work to strengthen the Clean Water Act in the face of regulatory agencies that simply refuse to do their jobs.

When we go into court, we are representing your interests—our members—a job we do best with your support, whether you’re signing a declaration to support NWEA’s standing in court or making a financial contribution. We depend on all of our members!

Best wishes for 2025
Nina Bell, Executive Director

P.S.      NWEA’s job is to make EPA and the states do their jobs. We may lack the fancy slogans and glossy magazines, but we’re putting your financial contribution to work enforcing the nation’s environmental laws. NWEA guarantees you a no frills operation—giving you highly credible and vigorous advocacy. I hope that you will consider making a tax-deductible contribution to NWEA where your contribution will be put to good use!

PUGET SOUND DISSOLVED OXYGEN: THE CASE IS NOW IN THE HANDS OF THE FEDERAL COURT

Aquatic animal life—whether fish, whales, or crabs—requires dissolved oxygen to survive and to thrive. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Washington Department of Ecology have known since the 1980s that Puget Sound has an excess of nitrogen, a pollutant that sucks dissolved oxygen from water, causing “dead zones.”  Read More

LAWSUIT TARGETS COLD-WATER REFUGES TO SAVE COLUMBIA RIVER SALMON FROM HIGH TEMPERATURES

The Columbia River is home to salmon species that are being pushed to extinction by unsafe water temperatures. Salmon and steelhead migrating through these lethal temperatures are forced to turn to a series of cold-water refuges to gain relief from the deadly heat. Each of these refuges is created by tributary rivers—such as the Deschutes, Sandy, and Hood Rivers in Oregon, and the Lewis and White Salmon Rivers in Washington. But with declining stream flows and climate change, soon these tributaries, and the cold-water refuges they create, will be too warm to protect salmon. And there are no refuges upstream of Oregon’s Deschutes River…Read More

WORKING AGAINST NEW PRESSURE TO BUILD MORE NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS

Preventing climate change requires swift actions with short term impacts, as well as being cost-effective and enduring. That’s why NWEA opposes the new nuclear power plants while supporting energy efficiency and renewable sources. It’s also why NWEA is working with others in the Pacific Northwest and nationally to counter pro-nuclear propaganda, explaining at least six reasons why nuclear power is not an option: (1) long delays, (2) higher electric bills, (3) risk of nuclear theft/terrorism, (4) cancer, birth defects, and chronic diseases, (5) water consumption, and (6) nuclear power actually makes climate change worse…Read More

PUGET SOUND LAWSUIT—ABOUT LOGGING’S EFFECT ON STREAM TEMPERATURES— IS NOW BEFORE THE COURT

Temperature pollution, primarily from logging and farming, affects rivers and streams throughout the Pacific Northwest. While climate change is a contributor, it is the removal of streamside trees and stream flows that drives most warming.

The Deschutes River flowing into Puget Sound’s Budd Inlet is nothing special in this regard; it’s merely yet one more example of how the states and EPA give lip service to protecting salmon from stream temperatures without doing anything…Read More

POSSIBLE GOOD NEWS FOR THE WILLAMETTE RIVER & OTHER OREGON RIVERS AND STREAMS

As a result of NWEA’s last lawsuit on Oregon’s failure to properly regulate pollution sources that raise the temperature of rivers and streams, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and EPA are under court order to replace TMDL clean-upplans for all or a portion of the Willamette, Umpqua, Rogue, John Day, Snake River/Hells Canyon, Lower Grande Ronde, Hood, Malheur, and Umatilla river basins by the end of 2029…Read More