Director's Blog
Analysis & Opinion
EPA Inaction 2022 Update
EPA Inaction 2022 UpdateEPA’s Waiting-for-Godot approachby Nina Bell • June 27, 2022 •
Last year I wrote about how Congressional intent gets defeated by EPA inaction using the example of the water quality standards in Washington that are needed to protect salmon and orcas. The saga since then has become—I don’t know—Kafkaesque?
Late in December 2021, a federal court ordered EPA to make determinations on whether these Washington’s standards were sufficient; she gave the agency six ...
Idaho Court Victory Musings
Idaho Court Victory MusingsHow Congress Gets Defeated Part Twoby Nina Bell • October 6, 2021 •
In Part One, I explained the genesis of EPA’s obligations to keep water quality standards for toxics updated, to reflect the latest science on what we know can hurt us and other living things.
In July, a federal court in Idaho read EPA the riot act on mercury.
We all know mercury is bad. EPA knew it 17 years ago when the agency first told the Idaho Department of Environmental ...
How Congress’ Clean Water Goals Get Defeated
How Congress’ Clean Water Goals Get DefeatedChapter 1: Washington's Outdated Toxic Protectionby Nina Bell • August 27, 2021 •
I suppose that every problem that I identify as a failure to carry out federal environmental laws is a story of how Congress gets defeated, but some of them stand out more than others as the bureaucracy manages to turn Congressional will into mush.
Without going into the long history of how we ended up with the Clean Water Act, passed by Congress in ...
Navel Staring is Killing Salmon
Navel Staring is Killing SalmonOr How Ecology Has Turned the Clean Water Act into a College Paperby Nina Bell • February 20, 2020 •
Lately, EPA has been looking into how much climate change has already warmed some Northwest rivers and predicting how much worse it’s going to be in the coming decades. The results are sobering, in part because we already know that our rivers are currently too hot for salmon and steelhead.
You would think that getting the really bad news on what these ...
Agency Malaise is Killing Salmon
Agency Malaise is Killing SalmonA Fishing Enthusiast Asks: Are water quality standards for temperatures impossible to attain?by Nina Bell • February 4, 2021 •
Well, dear reader, at one level the answer is the glib: “we will never know because we will never try to meet them.”
That is, the way to meet water quality standards is to protect streamside trees from being removed, limit the runoff of sediment that makes our streams shallow and wide, plant trees where there is no ...
Politics Are Killing Our Salmon
Politics Are Killing Our SalmonJanuary 24, 2021by Nina Bell • January 24, 2021 •
A Fishing Enthusiast asks: Why do state and federal agencies keep delaying enforcement of clean water laws that are supposed to protect salmon?
The answer to the question is, in a word: politics. Meeting water quality standards that are set to protect fish costs money because, as the old saying goes, “there is no such thing as a free lunch.”
Someone has to pay to stop pollution, whether it’s city ...
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