Washington Water Quality Standards
The foundation of Clean Water Act programs in Washington State is its water quality standards—the goals of all of its pollution control activities. Federal law requires states to review and update their water quality standards every three years and requires updates of certain toxic criteria at that time. Washington has been in a group of states that has lagged behind, year after year.
In 1987, Congress became frustrated with the slow pace of some states in updating their toxic standards and added requirements that led, in 1992, to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) promulgating standards for the protection of human health from toxics for Washington State. The Washington Department of Ecology did, however, manage to write its own standards for the protection of aquatic life from toxics.
But that’s where the effort died. Ultimately, under pressure from Puget Sound tribes and environmental group litigation ,the Washington Department of Ecology finally updated its human health criteria. Ecology largely relied on faulty assumptions to which EPA objected that subsequently led to EPA’s stepping in, once again, and promulgating federal standards for Washington State to protect human health from toxics.
In 2013, NWEA also submitted a formal petition to EPA asking for federal involvement in bringing Washington’s human health toxic standards into the new century. In addition, the NWEA petition asked EPA to update Washington’s aquatic life toxic standards, which Ecology has shown no interest in doing. After EPA failed to respond to the petition for over three years, NWEA took EPA to court in 2017.
Ecology has also been slow to update some of its other water quality standards that pertain to protecting salmon and steelhead. As with Washington’s toxics standards, those for such key pollutants and parameters such as temperature, dissolved oxygen, and ammonia also languish. Some have provisions that are intended to make sure that dischargers will rarely have to curtail their polluting activities. That’s why NWEA took EPA to court, challenging numerous provisions of Washington’s water quality standards, in 2014.
New Toxic Standards Sought in Washington
