By Abby Spegman
The Olympian
A lawsuit filed this week alleges federal authorities have failed to take action on pollution in Olympia area waters that violates the Clean Water Act.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court in Seattle by Portland-based Northwest Environmental Advocates, argues the Environmental Protection Agency has failed to put cleanup plans for Budd Inlet, Capitol Lake and the Deschutes River on the books.
The area has a long history of water quality problems, including low levels of dissolved oxygen in Budd Inlet and Capitol Lake that are harmful to fish and aquatic life. The Clean Water Act requires states to come up with plans to clean up waters that don’t meet quality standards.
In 2015, the state’s Department of Ecology submitted to the EPA its plan for the Deschutes River and streams that feed into it. Last year, the EPA approved parts of the plan but rejected other parts.
EPA is still working on alternatives to those parts, according to Andrew Kolosseus, who oversees water quality issues for Ecology’s southwest region.
“It has now been over a year and a half since EPA disapproved Washington’s submittal…,” the complaint says. “In the meantime, water quality in the Deschutes River basin continues to be degraded, and the interest of NWEA’s members continue to be harmed.”
The lawsuit also challenges EPA’s approval of ways to address water temperatures along the Deschutes that are deadly for endangered salmon, saying they don’t go far enough.
Northwest Environmental Advocates previously sued the EPA over its handling of cleanup plans, including for not moving fast enough on the Deschutes River plan.
In a news release announcing this latest lawsuit, Northwest Environmental Advocates Executive Director Nina Bell called cleanup in the area a “political hot potato.”
“Ecology has shown that cleaning up Budd Inlet requires reducing pollution from sewage treatment plants discharging to Puget Sound, making it a political hot potato…” Bell said. “EPA’s and Ecology’s failure to clean up pollution in Budd Inlet and the Deschutes is a reflection of their inability to bring the tools of the Clean Water Act to clean up Puget Sound as a whole.”
A spokesman for the EPA in Seattle did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Kolosseus said Ecology is now working on a separate cleanup plan for Budd Inlet. Another plan for Capitol Lake is possible, but that depends on an environmental impact statement for the lake that is underway.
