Cleaner river worth the cost

Rachael Paschal Osborn

Special to The Spokesman-Review

December 20, 2009

The Spokane City Council is grappling with a hike in wastewater utility rates. With the right decision, the Spokane River will soon benefit from long-needed sewer system upgrades.

After years of delay, the dissolved oxygen cleanup plan for the river is about to issue. While ultimate limits are uncertain, it is understood that the city sewage plant must meet very low standards for phosphorus. Spokane is not alone. Several river dischargers in Washington and Idaho will be assigned similar limits. Spokane, however, is the biggest polluter on the river and what happens here will drive overall achievement of water quality goals.

Fortunately, the city is gearing up for the task. At the Riverside facility, six new trailer-size buildings have been dubbed “Treatment Town.” A pilot program is experimenting with several filtration technologies, mixing and matching to identify optimal phosphorus control. Initial results are positive, although another year of testing is needed. This experiment should also yield filtration control information for other critical pollutants, including PCBs, heavy metals and the contaminants found in pharmaceutical and personal care products.

In addition to treatment plant upgrades, the city is finally fixing its archaic wastewater transport system, which combines and dumps stormwater and untreated sewage into the river when it rains. Again, Spokane is not alone. Around the United States, 772 cities must eliminate their combined sewer systems, which are a menace to environmental and public health. Spokane has a generous deadline of 2017 to correct its system and is slowly replacing these noxious pipes with stormwater holding vaults. The city is accelerating removal of the worst overflow pipes as part of a legal settlement with Sierra Club to eradicate illegal “dry weather” overflows.

It is no surprise that these upgrades come at a cost. The city wastewater department estimates $750 million is needed over several decades to fund these essential fixes. Efforts are needed to obtain federal assistance, but Spokane residents, too, will have to pay. Utility rates are going up.

City Council members are naturally reluctant to raise utility rates, particularly during economic hard times. But there are positive ways of looking at the problem and several good reasons why city residents should support a rate increase.

First, improving water quality is good for the local economy. The Spokane River is one of the most polluted rivers in the state, which does not create a good image for our community. Civic commitment to river cleanup translates to improved quality of life as well as a positive economic environment. People want clean water.

Second, during summer months the Spokane River is simply too small to carry the wastes generated by a half-million people. Dilution used to be the solution to pollution, but no more. The city must reduce effluent into the river through wastewater reuse, water conservation and a rate structure that encourages efficient plumbing. But as long as the river serves as our sewage conduit to the Pacific Ocean, high-level treatment will be necessary.

Third, the city should count itself lucky. The final river cleanup plan allots a fourfold increase to the city’s phosphorus limit. Truly, cleanup obligations could be even more expensive.

Fourth, putting treated sewage effluent into the river is a privilege, not a right. The city must deliver clean water to our downstream neighbors, including Riverside State Park and Lake Spokane and Spokane Indian Reservation residents. The Clean Water Act prohibits the “out of sight, out of mind” pollution control mentality prevalent in earlier decades.

Finally, many parties are making major investments in a healthy Spokane River. Upstream, in the Coeur d’Alene Basin, Superfund activities include a new commitment of $583 million to control metals in the headwaters. Under its new license, Avista will spend $334 million over 50 years, much of it dedicated to water quality improvements. The Spokane River Web page on the Department of Ecology Web site describes substantial state efforts toward toxic cleanup.

Is the Spokane River worth all this effort? You bet it is.

Future generations will not look back and complain about utility rates. Rather, they will ask why more was not done to save the river. A healthy Spokane River could be the legacy of today’s Spokane City Council.

Rachael Paschal Osborn is Sierra Club’s Spokane River Project coordinator.

Sierra Club’s historic settlement restores water to Spokane Falls.  

On May 1, 2009 -- almost 35 years to the day when Spokane welcomed the world to Expo ’74 at Spokane Falls -- Sierra Club, CELP, and Avista reached a settlement that restores water to Spokane Falls all year long.  Click here for more on Sierra Club’s work to restore Spokane Falls.

Spokane River’s declining flows. 

Flows monitored at the Monroe Street Gage since 1891 are dropping.  Among the problems:  pumping the Aquifer intercepts water that would otherwise flow to the River.  Sierra Club is challenging both Idaho and Washington to protect River flows.  For more on Sierra Club’s legal challenge of the Municipal Water Law to restore Spokane River flows, click here.

Algae bloom, Lake Spokane. 

Upstream sewage treatment plants in both states discharge effluent to the Spokane River.  Downstream dams aggravate the problem.  Phosphorus loading of these waters risks toxic algae blooms and fish kills.  For more on Sierra Club’s work to clean up these waters, click here.

Redband Trout - plummeting numbers. 

The Spokane River’s wild redband trout are indicators of ecosystem health and important to our river.  Trout numbers are plummeting. These fish deserve our attention and protection.  Sierra Club is working with Spokane Falls Trout Unlimited’s Redband Trout project to protect and restore the Redband Trout.  Click here for more. 

photo by Jeff Holmes

Dead Tundra Swan - wetlands, Coeur d’Alene - the “killing fields.”  

The annual spring migration of tundra swans includes a stop-over in the wetlands above Coeur d’Alene Lake.  Some swans never leave.  Lead is a neurotoxin for humans, swans, and other life.  For swans, the lead impairs their swallowing mechanism.  Unable to swallow, slowly they starve to death in the midst of this lead-poisoned wetland.  Since the 1980s the Sierra Club has demanded a cleanup of this river system - advocacy that helped lead to EPA designating the 1500 square-mile Coeur d’Alene Basin Superfund Site, the largest such site in the nation.  (photo:  Coeur d’Alene Tribal archives.)

Clearcutting and logging roads devastate the Coeur d’Alene National Forest. 

Averaging over 11-road-miles per square mile of forest, this forest watershed is unravelling - the most heavily damaged in America’s National Forest System.  Downstream is the toxic wetland - 10,000 acres covered with 100 million tons of sediments contaminated with mine wastes - lead cadmium, zinc. 

Floods from the damaged forests flow onto this wetland.  In a single day of the 1996 flood the USGS estimated over 1 million tons of lead flowed from the wetlands into Lake Coeur d’Alene.  The Lake is an inefficient trap for these toxins, and substantial amounts flow into the Spokane River (and from Idaho into Washington state). 

Sierra Club has insisted that the U.S. Forest Service stop logging and allow these forests to heal - to reduce flooding that carries toxic mine wastes into populated areas.  For more, click here.  (photo: Trygve Steen)

Hecla mine and polluted waters, Coeur d’Alene River (Canyon Creek). 

For over a century of hard-rock mining starting in 1884, mining companies created mine wastes, directly discharging into these waters.    Once among the richest silver, lead, and zinc mines in the world, their legacy is one of the world’s most polluted waters.  Lead, cadmium, zinc and other heavy metals flow with water, washing downstream hundreds of miles.  Since the 1980s Sierra Club has worked for a cleanup of the mine wastes contaminating the waters of the Spokane River - Lake Coeur d’Alene watershed.