River of controversy
“It’s continuing the backsliding that’s been occurring for the past five years,” said Michael Chappell, director of the Environmental Law Clinic at Gonzaga University. “I view it as a sellout to industry.” Image courtesy of Avista. Inland Empire Paper Co.---on full disclosure, the company is a subsidiary of the Cowles, also owners of The Spokesman-Review---claims the new standards will put them out of business. Avista worries they will shoulder pollution they don’t cause, and the plan is “extremely challenging if not impossible.” Two states, one river: The Cities of Coeur d’ Alene and Post Falls and the Hayden Area Regional Sewer Board believe Ecology is overstepping their bounds in issuing permits for Idaho. Ecology spokeswoman Jani Gilbert said they considered the economic facts and nobody will be going out of business. How could they? After all, Chappell said it was a sellout to industry. 
The Department of Ecology released a new plan for limiting algae-producing phosphorous that is drawing criticism from environmentally disparate parties such as the Sierra Club and Inland Empire Paper Co. Ecology’s fourth draft since 2004, it will reduce phosphorous levels by 90 percent over the next decade via multimillion dollar upgrades to sewage treatment plans and industrial dischargers.
Here’s where things really get screwy. From the Spokesman: The plan allows dischargers to use “pollution trading credits.” Two tributaries – Latah Creek and the Little Spokane River – send phosphorus into the Spokane River. If dischargers pay to reduce phosphorus from another source, such as helping a Latah Creek farmer fix an eroding shoreline, they would get credits against their own discharges. Environmentalists criticize that part of the plan, saying it uses unrealistic, unverifiable estimates about cleaning up “non-point-source” pollution and hangs too much responsibility on Avista – a utility that doesn’t directly release any phosphorus – to justify raising the limits for the treatment plants and paper company.
“It’s a shell game,” said John Osborn at the Oct. 20th hearing on behalf of the Sierra Club in the S-R, “and it won’t clean up the river.”
Read this fascinating story HERE. We’ll continue to follow the plan as it develops while finishing our locally gestating B-movie, working title “When Algae Attacks.”
