Director's Blog
Analysis & Opinion
Salmon Migration in Hot Columbia River: Part 2
by Nina Bell • February 22, 2020 •
In Part 1 of this long-running saga about NWEA’s efforts to provide some cool water relief to salmon navigating the hot waters of the Columbia River, we learned how an NWEA lawsuit led to the National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NMFS) giving EPA three years to come up with a plan to protect and restore the cooler water patches known as “cold-water refuges.”
Now, four years later, I’ll tell you where things stand.
EPA—moving as usual with ...
Puget Sound Nutrient Problem: Chapter 3
by Nina Bell • February 16, 2020 •
In Chapter 2 of the long-running saga about the demise of Puget Sound, I explained that the Washington Department of Ecology just cannot seem to stop itself from issuing illegal discharge permits to cities that are polluting Puget Sound. Now let me introduce another part of the Clean Water Act that Ecology is ignoring: clean-up plans that are required when a state lets pollution levels rise to levels that are unsafe for people and ...
Puget Sound Nutrient Problem: Chapter 2
by Nina Bell • February 8, 2020
This is Chapter 2 in the continuing saga on how the Washington Department of Ecology sits on its hands while Puget Sound dies. Given Ecology’s recent blog post asserting that it’s actually doing something—which I’ll address in Chapter 5—it’s essential to reveal and speak truth to power, as the old saying goes.
You don’t have to know too much about the federal Clean Water Act to know that it is supposed to give us—the public—clean water. One ...
Salmon Migration in a Hot Columbia River
by Nina Bell • February 8, 2020 •
Twenty-three years. That’s how long it’s taken for EPA to sort-of address just one critical aspect of protecting the salmon and steelhead that attempt to navigate the hot waters of the Columbia River. Now, a rational person wanting to protect migrating salmon from deadly river temperatures would want to get a two-decade head start on growing the trees required to help keep streams cool since trees only grow as fast as they can grow, unlike, say, ...
Puget Sound Nutrient Problem: Chapter 1
by Nina Bell • February 1, 2020
This is the first in a series of chapters about how an agency can manage to do nothing while assuring the public that it is busy doing its job, in this case to protect and restore Puget Sound. Well, it’s unfair to say that the Washington Department of Ecology literally has done nothing about nutrient pollution in Puget ...
Mercury in the Willamette River
by Nina Bell • January 22, 2020I recently finished writing a 17-page comment letter on Oregon DEQ’s proposal to downgrade protection from mercury contaminating the Willamette River basin. The proposal is called a “variance” and this one is a 20-year removal of water quality standards that are supposed to protect people from mercury-contaminated fish. The variance is a head-scratcher in several ways unless you accept that DEQ is just plain scared to do its job and protect water quality. ...
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