Anticipating your questions:
WHAT IS THE WATER QUALITY CLEAN-UP PLAN ALL ABOUT
The following Q&A will help you understand what’s going on with sewage in the Spokane River and what you can do about it.
What’s happening? The Washington Department of Ecology is issuing a water quality cleanup plan (called a Total Maximum Daily Load or TMDL) in September. The clean-up plan is supposed to solve the problems with the Spokane River related to dissolved oxygen. There will be a public meeting on September 24 and a deadline for your comment on October 15. Citizens who care about the Spokane River need to get involved.
What’s wrong with the Spokane River? The Spokane River has a problem with low dissolved oxygen (called “DO” for short).
Why is Dissolved Oxygen important? Like all living things, fish need oxygen to survive. That oxygen is dissolved into the water that is flowing into the river. But during late summer, when river temperatures are high and flows are low, there’s not enough oxygen to support healthy fisheries. These fisheries, including rainbow trout and other species, serve to indicate that the Spokane River is in bad shape.
What’s causing the Dissolved Oxygen problem in the Spokane River? Low DO is caused by the discharge of pollutants that are not adequately treated, including sewage and industrial effluent. Each of these pollutants contains nutrients, including phosphorus and ammonia, that cause plant and algae growth. As these plants grow, they consume oxygen, lowering the DO contained in the river. In addition, stormwater runoff contributes to the DO problem.
What About CSOs? The City of Spokane’s combined sewer overflow system allows raw sewage to flow directly into the Spokane River. These overflows contribute to the River’s dissolved oxygen problem. To read about Spokane’s CSO’s, click here.
How do we fix the Spokane River’s Dissolved Oxygen problem? Thirty-five years ago, in 1972, the U.S. Congress enacted the Clean Water Act, promising that the nation’s rivers would become “fishable and swimmable” by 1985. Since that time a lot of work has been done to clean up the Spokane River and other waterbodies around the state and the nation, but we have yet to achieve our goals. State and federal water quality laws require Washington to improve dissolved oxygen in the Spokane River in order to meet “water quality standards.” Those standards require that the River’s water be healthy enough to support trout and other fisheries. To read more about the laws that govern water quality, click here.
Why has it taken so long to fix the problem? The Dissolved Oxygen clean-up plan got underway in 1998. In 2004, the state issued a draft plan that would have fixed the problem, then withdrew it when the City of Spokane and other polluters threatened to sue. The state and dischargers spent two years negotiating a settlement, called the “Managed Implementation Plan” (see below). Now, in September 2009, we have another draft plan.
What is the Sierra Club Scenario? In November 2005, Sierra Club proposed a comprehensive alternative to the polluter-driven clean-up plan. The Sierra Club Scenario proposes a variety of sensible activities. Click here to review the Sierra Club Scenario (60 pages) for the Spokane River.
What about the Spokane Tribe? The Spokane River forms the southern boundary of the Spokane Indian Reservation. The Spokane Tribe has established a Dissolved Oxygen water quality standard for that stretch of the river, but to date the tribe’s DO standard has not been met. Both the state of Washington and the Environmental Protection Agency are required to ensure that the tribal DO standard is met.
How does the ban on phosphate cleaning products fit in? The Washington state legislature enacted a law requiring that, by 2008, only phosphate-free dishwater detergent be available for use in the Spokane area. That requirement is helping to reduce the amount of phosphates going into and coming out of the treatment plants. For info on the phosphate-free dish detergent law, click here.
