Fishing in our lakes, bays and rivers is part of our Washington heritage. In 2013, over 1.5 million Washingtonians bought fishing licenses and spent 13.4 million days on the water fishing. Here in Spokane, we are blessed to have the Spokane River and over 75 surrounding lakes that are filled with fish to catch and eat. However, that heritage is in trouble, trouble that started in our industrial past.

In the early 20th century, America’s lakes and rivers became so polluted they barely sustained life. The Cuyahoga River in Ohio famously caught fire, spurring bipartisan passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972. Its goal was to make all waters fishable and swimmable by 1983, and to eliminate all pollution discharges by 1985. Unfortunately, this has not occurred.

Our Spokane River is contaminated with PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), heavy metals and other toxic pollutants. Because these chemicals accumulate in the river’s fish, every stretch of the river has fish advisories warning anglers about the risk of eating their catch.

Local fish should be a plentiful and healthy source of protein, not something to be feared.

Unfortunately, people who eat walleye out of the lower Spokane, the rainbow trout that Avista is stocking in Lake Spokane, or the smallmouth bass from the Nine Mile stretch, need to look over their shoulders at the advisories and wonder if the fish they caught are safe to eat. This is especially important for pregnant women, kids, and folks who catch and eat a lot of fish. The problems that plague the Spokane are not unique, as this sad pattern repeats itself in the Columbia River, Puget Sound, and too many waterways across Washington.

Despite the Clean Water Act’s mandate, and the toxic soup of pollution that discourages us from eating fish, Washington has some of the weakest protections for its waters. The amount of toxic pollution we allow in our waters is based on an assumption that people only eat 6.5 grams of fish per day – an amount the size of a quarter. That assumption grossly underestimates what most Washingtonians actually eat, particularly those – tribal members, anglers and immigrant communities – who eat a lot of fish.

In January, the Washington Department of Ecology released a draft rule that recognized the higher fish consumption rates by Washingtonians (175 grams per day). This sounds great, but the benefit of the rule is turned on its head by significantly increasing the state’s cancer risk rate (allowing a tenfold increase in the risk of getting cancer from eating fish). The rule also offers new loopholes for industry to avoid reducing toxics (allowing polluters decades to meet the new standards). Not surprisingly, Ecology’s draft water quality rule was widely criticized by tribes, the public health community and environmental groups as dangerously underprotective of human health.

Recognizing the rule’s shortcomings, Gov. Jay Inslee pledged to approve the rule only if the Legislature passed a statewide toxics reduction program to address pollution at its source. This program would have allowed Ecology to identify and sideline dangerous chemicals before they hit the market, and ended up in our waterways – and fish. He promised this program would result in meaningful reductions in toxics.

Unfortunately, Inslee’s plan failed to pass the Legislature. As a result, he announced he would put the whole process on hold, and ordered a “reassessment” of the rule. Fortunately for all of us, this gives the governor an opportunity to fix the deeply flawed rule in order to maintain a protective cancer risk rate and eliminate loopholes for polluters that would render any changes meaningless. If the governor does not make the changes, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said it will step in and finalize a new rule for the state.

Inslee must do everything in his power to protect the most vulnerable – pregnant women, anglers, young children, and tribal members – from the devastating health effects of potent neurotoxins like methylmercury and carcinogens like PCBs. If he can’t do the right thing, it is better for those of us who eat fish and care about the health of our waters that he step aside and let EPA do it for him.