OLYMPIA — Gov. Jay Inslee said Thursday he doesn’t want the federal government writing clean water rules for the state and will offer his own regulatory approach to “improve human health” in the near future.
“We would lose control of our pollution control system,” he said. “I am very concerned about that because frankly I don’t think it would be the right thing for the state to lose control of our own fundamental destiny.”
But Inslee didn’t elaborate on what he might offer in the way of tougher standards for the discharge of pollutants into the state’s waterways.
“We are likely to have more to say about that in the relatively near future,” he told reporters at a news conference Thursday.
Inslee’s comments come two months after he scrapped a major rewrite of the rules completed out by his Department of Ecology.
He had tied adoption of those rules, which are based in part on the amount of fish people eat, with passage of a bill to curb use of toxins by industries across the state. Lawmakers didn’t pass the bill and Inslee responded by not moving ahead with the new rules.
His decision opened the door for federal intervention and officials of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency walked through it last month. They proposed regulations that will be adopted after a period of public review, a process that could wrap up in less than a year.
But federal officials insist they’ll take a timeout if the state does indeed try again.
“We have made clear our preference was and continues to be for the state of Washington to develop its own standards,” Dan Opalski, director of the EPA’s regional office of water and watersheds said last month. “If they come forward with a new proposal we would pause our process.”
Federal law requires rivers and other major bodies of water must be clean enough so people can safely eat fish from those waters. Since 1992, the state has based its standards on the assumption people consume about 6.5 grams of fish a day, which is about a quarter of an ounce.
The EPA proposal would hike the fish consumption rate to 175 grams a day. The higher the number means fewer toxic chemicals would be permitted for discharge into state waters. And the agency would not change Washington’s cancer-risk rate.
Inslee’s discarded proposal contained the same 175 grams a day fish consumption rate but sought to apply different cancer-risk rates to exposure to different chemicals. He said his plan would not negatively affect any existing business in the state — a claim that EPA officials are not making about the proposed federal rule.
Environmentalists and tribal leaders, who didn’t consider the rules drafted by Inslee to be strong enough, are backing the EPA’s approach.
Jerry Cornfield: 360-352-8623;jcornfield@heraldnet.com.
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