A wake-up call on our freshwater resources
Today, people throughout the world are recognizing World Water Day, a day designated by the United Nations to reflect on the condition of our freshwater resources. In the Northwest, the close connection between our daily lives and our rivers, lakes and streams makes this a particularly important day to consider how well Oregon is protecting them.
Oregon can be proud of some things, such as the explosion of watershed councils across the state and the fact that public concern about protecting water quality crosses most political, demographic and economic lines. Whether for drinking, agriculture, fish or recreation, Oregonians place a high value on our state waters.
But World Water Day this year should also serve as a wake-up call that serious reform is needed in how Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality, Gov. Ted Kulongoski and the Legislature are meeting their responsibilities to protect the state's water resources.
The problems are real. More than 13,000 miles of Oregon's rivers violate state water quality pollution standards intended to protect fish, wildlife and humans.
On the Columbia River, for example, a multiyear study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission found that fish toxicity levels were so high they created a 1 in 50 cancer risk for Columbia River tribal members. In response, the EPA recently designated the Columbia as one of its top five priority areas in the country for reducing toxic pollutants.
But DEQ policymakers continue to allow polluters to dump more than 50 billion gallons of pollution into the Columbia and Willamette Rivers each year with little consideration as to how this pollution cumulatively affects people or fish. The DEQ, the governor and some legislators have defended this "toxic mixing zone" loophole, which lets industry discharge toxic pollutants such as lead, arsenic and mercury at concentrations that blatantly exceed state toxicity standards.
To date, the DEQ has even refused to prepare a basic assessment of how many tons of toxics are being discharged each year into toxic mixing zones.
At the same time, environmentalists have had to continually fight DEQ efforts to weaken Oregon's water pollution standards. Right now, for example, the agency is considering plans to weaken that standard to a level that DEQ's own documents admit would cause the city of Bend's drinking-water filtration system to shut down.
Although most DEQ employees are dedicated, hard-working and committed to improving water quality, the agency's leadership openly refers to the polluters it regulates as its "customers" and treats them accordingly.
If Oregonians are serious about wanting to restore our rivers and streams, then we need to insist that Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality and our elected leaders make clean water a priority. While restoring our rivers is a long-term effort, it would be a major step in the right direction if the DEQ started to think of the people who swim in, fish and drink from Oregon rivers as their customers and begin to treat them accordingly.
Brent Foster is executive director of Columbia Riverkeeper.