Three environmental groups have sued the
Environmental Protection Agency over the warm wastewater that flows
out of the Potlatch Corp. pulp and paper mill in Lewiston, Idaho.
The Lands Council, Idaho Rivers United and the Idaho Conservation
League say bull trout, salmon and steelhead can’t survive when the
Snake River heats up. All the fish are listed as threatened or
endangered under the Endangered Species Act.
Yet
in 1997, without review, the EPA indefinitely extended Potlatch’s
expired 1992 wastewater permit. The extension allows the mill to
continue its daily discharge of more than 35 million gallons into
the slack waters behind the Snake’s Lower Granite Dam. The permit
also allows the wastewater to register up to 24 degrees warmer than
the state’s 68 degree benchmark for river health, and Mark Solomon
of the Lands Council says this may harm fish. Solomon also says the
agency violated the Endangered Species Act.
“You
can’t just extend this permit without finding out whether or not
(the effluent) is harmful to the salmon and steelhead,” he
says.
But Solomon and Potlatch agree that keeping
the river’s temperature below the state’s limit is complicated.
Parts of the Snake consistently test hotter than the benchmark in
the summer, and dams and irrigation diversions have contributed to
the problem.
Potlatch spokesman Frank Carroll
says the mill is being unfairly singled out. Some of the Snake’s
headwater streams, he points out, run warmer than 68
degrees.
“What are they going to do about that?”
he says. “Put in a glacier?”
Now, the EPA and
the Idaho groups are negotiating a possible out-of-court
settlement. If the talks fail, the Idaho Conservation League’s John
McCarthy says the case will be heard in Seattle’s U.S. District
Court, where Potlatch is an intervenor in the suit. “This suit is
not about Potlatch polluting,” Carroll charges. “It’s about a
political agenda to get rid of four dams on the Snake River.”
*Ali Macalady
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline A river too warm.
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