Washington state is behind — years behind — its obligation to update its list of the state’s polluted waters, says a new report by the Government Accountability Office, or GAO. The delay could affect the cleanup of waterways throughout the state and the water quality of Puget Sound, creating additional problems for the sound’s three species of threatened salmon.
States and the federal government are supposed to work together to keep rivers, lakes, oceans and wetlands healthy. The federal Clean Water Act, which regulates water pollution from point sources, including industrial sites and sewage treatment plants, requires each state to maintain a list of water bodies that don’t meet federal standards and submit an update to the Environmental Protection Agency every two years.
This isn’t just more bureaucratic homework; these lists of “impaired waters” are intended to provide Congress, federal and state agencies, tribal nations and the public with timely water-quality information. Washington’s impaired waters list, for example, has identified problems ranging from low levels of dissolved oxygen in Puget Sound to high levels of phosphorus in the Spokane River. Some tribes and state agencies use the lists to set cleanup priorities and inform funding decisions.
The GAO report found that the Washington State Department of Ecology, the agency responsible for submitting the lists, has been missing deadlines for a decade. The 2012 impaired waters list was submitted in 2015. Lists for 2014 and 2016 were submitted in 2018, while the 2018 list wasn’t submitted until 2021. The deadlines for the 2020 and 2022 lists have also passed. (The EPA has been tardy, too: The agency is supposed to approve or deny impaired waters lists within 30 days of submission, but in 2018, it took nine months to complete its initial review of Washington’s work.) According to the EPA, Washington is one of only three states — the others are New York and North Dakota — that hadn’t submitted its 2020 and 2022 impaired waters lists as of August 2023.
So why is Washington so late? State officials attributed the backlog to the number and complexity of Washington’s water bodies and the amount of data collected by other agencies, saying it takes time to bring everything together. “Washington definitely has one of the most extensive data sets in the country,” said Vince McGowan, Ecology’s water-quality program manager. A new data automation process slowed down recent assessments, he said, but should make them more efficient in the future.
“We’re not willing to sacrifice either the quality or the engagement on that list.”
McGowan added that consultation with the 29 federally recognized tribes in Washington — including 17 Puget Sound tribes with treaty fishing rights — and public review have extended the process. “The list is important, and we use it to make big decisions over time,” he said. “But we’re not willing to sacrifice either the quality or the engagement on that list.”
University of Washington professor Joel Baker, who heads the Puget Sound Institute, a regional research and analysis center, said that Ecology generally “does a pretty good job” of maintaining water quality. But he called the finding that Washington is slower than most other states “a legitimate criticism.” “I don’t buy (Ecology’s) arguments that somehow the work is harder in Washington state,” Baker said.
Republican U.S. Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Dan Newhouse, both from eastern Washington, and Oregon’s Cliff Bentz requested the GAO report in August 2021. They have since used its results to criticize Gov. Jay Inslee’s work on salmon protection. (All three representatives strongly oppose the removal of four salmon-blocking dams from the Snake River, while Inslee, who says that dam removal is not yet feasible, has also said it may be possible in the future.) In a letter responding to the report, Washington Department of Ecology Director Laura Watson wrote that the deadlines are not “integral” to the success of the state’s salmon recovery efforts. “Ecology disagrees with the report’s focus on the timeliness of the state’s impaired waters lists as a key component of salmon recovery in Washington,” she wrote.
“We’re having real successes in some of our watersheds here in the Northwest.”
David Herrera, chair of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission’s Environmental Policy Committee and a member of the Skokomish Tribe, said that while he was initially alarmed, after he read the report, he “wasn’t really that concerned” about it. Other work on salmon protection is underway, he said, including extensive habitat restoration by the Skokomish Tribe and others. Chinook and sockeye now swim up the Skokomish River, where both species were extirpated decades ago. “We’re having real successes in some of our watersheds here in the Northwest,” Herrera said.
Water pollution from industrial sites, while a problem, is far from the only challenge Washington’s salmon face. The fish face numerous threats outside the scope of impaired waters lists — including warmer waters due to climate change, habitat degradation and nonpoint source pollution, which is not regulated by the Clean Water Act and includes agricultural and storm runoff. The GAO report recommended that Congress revisit the legislation’s “largely voluntary approach” to nonpoint source pollution. Herrera agreed: “The real concern is the reliance on voluntary programs,” he said. “A lot of tribes think that there needs to be more of an enforcement action to get more people to go along, but the state’s not there yet.”
This story is part of High Country News’ Conservation Beyond Boundaries project, funded by the BAND Foundation.
Kylie Mohr is a correspondent for High Country News writing from Montana. Email her at kylie.mohr@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.
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