OLYMPIA, Washington, November 10, 2008 (ENS) – Each year, 52 million pounds of toxic chemicals – nearly 150,000 pounds per day – inundate Puget Sound with contaminated runoff. This amounts to a toxic spill the size of Exxon Valdez every two years, according to the Puget Sound Partnership, a community effort of governments, tribes, scientists and businesses working together to restore and protect the Sound.

The toxic chemicals include oil and petroleum products, lead, and phthalates – and one million pounds of toxic metals such as zinc and copper. These metals, despite being released in lower concentrations than oil and petroleum, can harm threatened salmon species.

“These disturbing numbers are putting more than 40 species in Puget Sound at risk, including the Sound’s orca population, where we just saw a decline of nearly 10 percent in the past several months,” said the Partnership’s Executive Director David Dicks.

The Puget Sound Partnership Thursday released a draft Action Agenda for protecting, restoring and cleaning up Puget Sound, which encompasses the Seattle-Tacoma metropolitan area, home to about five million people.

Puget Sound as seen from the Seattle
Space Needle (Photo credit unknown)

The draft Action Agenda recommends using “a comprehensive and integrated approach to managing urban stormwater and rural surface water runoff.”

“By protecting the last remaining intact places, problems can be prevented before they occur, which is the best and most cost-effective approach to restoring ecosystem health,” the draft agenda states.

Among other measures, it would establish and maintain locally coordinated, effective on-site sewage system management to reduce pollutant loading to vulnerable surface waters.

It would prevent pollutants from being introduced into Puget Sound ecosystems in the first place, and to deal with contaminants already in the Sound it would prioritize and implement projects to clean up toxic contamination in water and upland areas.

If the draft agenda is adopted, it would protect and conserve stream flows for natural system and human uses and focus growth away from ecologically important and sensitive areas by encouraging dense, compact cities and vital rural communities.

“Human activities have vastly altered the ecosystem during the past 150 years,” the draft agenda states. “Restoration efforts need to bring large portions of river, wetland and marine systems back to life.”

Under the plan, the Partnership would implement and maintain priority ecosystem restoration projects for marine, nearshore, estuary, freshwater riparian and uplands.

It would revitalize waterfront communities while enhancing marine and freshwater shoreline environments and increase private landowners’ ability to undertake restoration projects.

New analysis supporting the draft Action Agenda identifies some “alarming” facts and trends related to the health of Puget Sound, said Dicks.

Two pollution reports, “Pollutant Loadings for Surface Runoff and Roadways” and “Improved Estimates of Loadings from Dischargers of Municipal and Industrial Wastewater,” confirm the state’s previous findings that surface runoff is the main pathway of the toxic chemicals getting into the Sound.

The primary sources of toxics to Puget Sound are the day-to-day activities of people, as the population grows and land gets more and more developed.

The estimates are based on current knowledge about toxic pollutants from surface runoff, air deposition, wastewater from discharge pipes, direct spills into the water and combined sewer/stormwater overflows only.

The reports, and a summary document, can be found online at www.ecy.wa.gov

The draft Action Agenda is subject to a public comment period that ends on November 20.

For convenience, an online “open house” has been added to the Partnership’s website for collecting comments: www.psp.wa.gov.

In addition, two public meetings, both beginning at 9 am, will be held this month to solicit feedback:

* Nov. 11: Embassy Suites Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Triple Crown Ballroom, 15920 W. Valley Highway, Seattle
* Nov. 21: Edmonds Conference Center

The Partnership’s Leadership Council will adopt the final Action Agenda on December 1 at a Sound-wide celebration event in Seattle.

“The Action Agenda is the best chance we have to repair the damage to Puget Sound and ensure we leave a legacy of a clean and healthy Puget Sound for our children and grandchildren,” Dicks said. “Success truly depends on all of us coming together and being a part of the solution.”

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SAN FRANCISCO, California, September 4, 2008 (ENS) – One of the largest providers of waste management services in the San Francisco Bay area is facing hefty financial penalties from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, after being found liable for over 100 stormwater violations of the Clean Water Act.

EPA inspectors found evidence that California Waste Solutions violated its permit and discharged waste and other pollutants into nearby waterways in three locations for nearly five years.

“The EPA requires companies to take simple, basic steps to prevent pollution,” said Alexis Strauss, Water Division Director for EPA’s Pacific Southwest region, announcing the company’s liability on Wednesday.

“We expect a company responsible for large municipal contracts in the Bay to protect San Francisco Bay, and comply with federal and state pollution requirements,” she said.

Storm drain surrounded by litter at California Waste
Solutions’ San Jose facility (Photo courtesy
U.S. EPA)

California Waste Solutions provides waste management services for large portions of Oakland and San Jose.

At the San Jose facility, at least 35 rainfall incidents caused surface water runoff to discharge litter, zinc, recyclables, and other pollutants into Coyote Creek, a tributary of the San Francisco Bay.

At two California Waste Solutions Oakland facilities, at least 74 rainfall incidents caused surface water runoff to discharge litter and debris into the San Francisco Bay’s Oakland waterfront.

The Oakland shoreline and Coyote Creek are home to Endangered Species Act-listed species. Coyote Creek provides critical habitat for California Central Coast Steelhead trout.

Stormwater is a national priority for the EPA, said Strauss. Stormwater runoff from urban areas can include a variety of pollutants, such as sediment, bacteria, organic nutrients, hydrocarbons, metals, oil and grease. Discharges of these pollutants can harm the environment and public health.

The Clean Water Act requires waste management companies to have controls in place to prevent pollutants from being discharged with stormwater into nearby waterways.

The companies must have a stormwater pollution prevention plans in place that set guidelines and best management practices to follow, to prevent runoff from being contaminated by pollutants.

The amounts that the EPA will levy against the company in fines have not yet been made public.

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CHICAGO, Illinois, July 14, 2008 (ENS) – A month-long public comment period begins today on a proposed $3.8 million plan to clean a toxic insecticide from soil and sediment in two creeks near the Nease Chemical Superfund site in Columbiana County, Ohio.

The Nease Chemical Co. operated from 1961 to 1973, producing household cleaning products, fire retardants and pesticides, including an uncommon chemical called mirex.

Mirex has been listed as a persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic pollutant by the EPA. It is a manufactured insecticide in the form of a white crystalline odorless solid used to control fire ants and as a flame retardant in plastic, rubber, paint, paper and electronics. It was banned in the United States in 1978.

The Superfund site covers 44 acres along state Route 14, 2.5 miles northwest of Salem on the Columbiana-Mahoning county line.

At the Nease Superfund site unlined ponds were used to treat chemical waste, which seeped into the area’s soil and ground water. Surface water runoff from the waste treatment ponds flowed into nearby Feeder Creek tributaries that run through the site causing pollution in the Middle Fork of Little Beaver Creek which is east of the site.

Rutgers Organics, based in Germany, acquired the property in 1977, but never operated there. The site was placed on the Superfund National Priorities List in 1983.

After reviewing a feasibility study prepared by the responsible party Rutgers Organics Corp., U.S. EPA Region 5 evaluated three cleanup alternatives.

Nease Superfund Site near Salem,
Ohio. (Panoramic Photo Collage by
Masumi Hayashi)

The agency’s $3.8 million plan is considered to be “protective of human health and the environment. It will provide long-term effectiveness and is cost-effective,” the agency said.

The plan entails removal of the most contaminated sediment in the Middle Fork of Little Beaver Creek and removal of Feeder Creek sediment. It includes removal of the most contaminated floodplain surface soil.

All this contaminated soil and sediment will be disposed back on the Superfund site at the former Nease facility, where it will be covered with clean soil, the EPA says.

Separate from the work outlined in this proposed cleanup plan, EPA approved a cleanup plan in 2006 to address the portion of the Nease site known as Operable Unit 2.

Ground water and mirex-contaminated soil cleanup work for this portion of the site of the site is expected to continue through 2011.

Mirex breaks down slowly in the environment and may remain in soil for years,” the EPA wants. It can build up in fish or other organisms that live in contaminated bodies of water, and it can also build up in animals or people who eat contaminated fish.

The EPA says on its website, “We are not sure now mirex affects people’s health, but it may cause cancer and can affect the skin, liver, and nervous and reproductive systems. Exposure to mirex happens from eating food or touching soil containing the chemical.”

A meeting to accept public input on the plan will be held at 6:30 pm, July 31, at Salem Public Library, 821 E. State St.

Residents who need special accommodations for the meeting may contact Community Involvement Coordinator Susan Pastor by July 24 at 800-621-8431, Ext. 31325, or pastor.susan@epa.gov.

Comments also will be accepted online via www.epa.gov/region5/sites/nease, where background information including a current fact sheet can be viewed.

EPA will choose a final cleanup plan after reviewing all comments received during the comment period. The agency may modify its proposed plan or select another of the options outlined at the public meeting or in the fact sheet.

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