Topics may include use of fish to detect pollution in streams
By Erik Robinson
Published: November 7, 2010, 12:00am
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Public meeting
o What: Discuss potential changes to the state’s surface water quality standards.
o When: 1:30 p.m. Nov. 15.
o Where: Washington State School for the Blind, 2214 E. 13th St., Vancouver.
State environmental regulators, reassessing the quality of Washington’s water, will seek the public’s opinion with a series of meetings around the state this month.
The state Department of Ecology will convene one of those meetings in Vancouver on Nov. 15.
State officials already anticipate they may need to review Washington’s fish consumption standard, especially with neighboring Oregon poised to adopt a much more stringent standard.
Public meeting
o What: Discuss potential changes to the state's surface water quality standards.
o When: 1:30 p.m. Nov. 15.
o Where: Washington State School for the Blind, 2214 E. 13th St., Vancouver.
“We strongly suspect … we’re going to hear that fish consumption is an issue that needs to be tackled,” said Susan Braley, a supervisor in the agency’s water quality program. “We know that there is a strong sentiment to move forward.”
The idea is to judge the quality of the water by the toxicity of the creatures living in it.
Tribal groups, whose diets heavily rely on river-caught fish, successfully made the case to Oregon regulators to raise their assumption about how much fish people eat.
Oregon’s standard, which is expected to take effect next year, assumes someone eats about 23 fish meals a month. That’s a big increase over the current assumption of one 7-ounce serving per month.
But it’s unclear whether the new standard will enable regulators to crank down on pollution.
Industry and regulators say they can barely measure, much less constrain, the relatively tiny amount of pollution permitted to flow out of “point sources” such as pipes discharging treated effluent from sewer plants or paper mills.
Federal regulations under the Clean Water Act require that states hold public hearings at least once every three years to review state water-quality standards.
