A couple of busy days in the fish consumption rate debate. First, the governor convenes a group of advisers (from Investigate West):

In a letter to the state Ecology Department (embedded below), Inslee announced his intention to organize an informal group of advisers from local governments, Indian tribes and businesses. Environmental groups, notably, are not mentioned. The process is to kick off this month, and Inslee told Ecology Director Maia Bellon that by late this year he will “provide you with guidance” that will allow new rules to be proposed in early 2014.

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It remains to be seen whether Indian tribes will agree to participate. Tribal interests and nearly all environmental groups – with the exception of Portland-based Northwest Environmental Advocates – have been boycotting the two-year Ecology “stakeholder process” set in motion by last summer’s decision.

Tribes instead took their case to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which had repeatedly warned Ecology in the past that the current estimate of fish consumption is unrealistically low. The Indian tribes cited treaties that guarantee them the right to fish in Washington waters – rights they say are abridged if the fish is not safe enough to eat on a regular basis.

Also, Northwest Environmental Advocates announced they’re dropping out of the formal process (also from Investigate West):

On the heels of Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s jumping into the fray over water-pollution standards, which we reported yesterday, the only environmental group still cooperating with the state Ecology Department on the issue announced today it is dropping out, citing what Northwest Environmental Advocates called “Orwellian doublespeak” used to cover up huge proposed loopholes. The group also charged that “Ecology has bent over backward to satisfy pollution sources concerned about having to reduce their toxic discharges to Washington’s waters.”

NWEA Executive Director Nina Bell said in an interview that she already was drafting a letter of resignation from Ecology’s process when she heard about Inslee’s forming a panel of advisers that did not include environmental groups.

“Excluding organizations that represent the health interests of Washington’s citizens and who have expertise in the Clean Water Act and pollution control is both stunning and insulting,” said the NWEA resignation letter to Maia Bellon, the Ecology director.

The move by NWEA was also covered by the Salish Sea Blog.

The editorial board of the Olympian takes on the fish consumption rate issue yesterday:

The state Department of Health recommends eating two servings of fish per week. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Service, the U.S. average fish consumption rate has been slightly declining since 2006, although it remains about 20 percent higher than 1980.

The Department of Ecology must provide a realistic fish consumption estimate. It is obligated to do so, and Gregoire was wrong to intervene. The state needs large employers to keep our economic recovering going, but that does not justify obviously inaccurate fish consumption rates.

With an accurate number, Ecology can work transparently with tribes, conversation groups and business to devise an implementation strategy – perhaps one phased in over many years – that strikes a balanced, middle ground.

More Fish Consumption Rate reporting from KPLU:

Efforts to change that standard have stalled, and Washington’s tribes, fed up, are calling on federal authorities to intervene.

Washington’s current standard assumes people eat less than 8 ounces of fish per month—about what’s in a large basket of fish and chips. It’s not realistic and everyone knows it, says Swinomish Tribe chairman Brian Cladoosby.

“I just had two big pieces of halibut last night. It was probably close to 12 ounces,” Cladoosby said. “And Dad brought me over a baked King salmon just the other night. I mean, that’s all I eat.”

Read the entire thing here.

The Inlander has a great piece on the ongoing fish consumption rate debate in Washington State:

The basic science is simple. Depending on the dose, anything — arsenic, botulism, chocolate sauce — can be dangerous or harmless. Toxins in fish aren’t as problematic if they’re eaten very rarely. Washington state’s water-quality standards, therefore, rely on assumptions about how much fish people eat.

But in its current water-quality standards, Washington assumes each person only eats 6.5 grams of fish per day. That’s about half the amount that would fit on a soda cracker — one-thirtieth of a single plate of seafood at Anthony’s restaurant. The figure’s a national average, left over from a Department of Agriculture survey in the 1970s that included those who never ate fish.

Local tribes say the number is wildly inaccurate. In the 1990s, surveys of four Indian tribes on the Columbia River showed the average tribal member ate nearly 10 times more fish than that.

The run-of-the-mill tribal member, Pierre says, may not care about all the numbers, but they care about what they can eat. “Do we want to eat that much fish?” Pierre says, a tiny dime-sized space between his thumb and finger. “No, we’re going to eat a lot more than that. We want to eat this much fish. That’s the best way I can explain it to tribal members.”

Read the entire thing here.

More good work by Robert McClure and Olivia Henry:

The documents obtained this month by InvestigateWest under the Washington Public Records Act further pull back the curtain on a controversy that continues to simmer. This week Indian tribes will go over the state’s head to bring their protests to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The heart of the tribes’ complaint is how the state sets water-pollution standards. A key part of that process is estimating how much fish people eat; the less fish consumed by residents, the more pollution can be dumped into waterways. But Washington’s estimate is decades out of date, as the EPA has repeatedly warned Ecology. More recent surveys show some residents eat a lot more than the official numbers.

“This is a public health issue and our current rate on fish consumption is just unacceptable,” said Shawn Yanity, chairman of the Stillaguamish Tribe and co-leader of a state-tribal environmental committee. “The science is very sound. It’s all there.”

Read the entire piece here.

There’s a another great editorial reacting to Robert McClure’s piece on the politics of the fish consumption rate.

Here are some good points from the op-ed in the Everett Herald this morning (read the entire thing here):

The irony is that the Department of Health advocates people eat fish twice a week, and consumption by tribal members has always been high. McClure expertly connects the dots, documenting correspondence between DOE and Boeing. A Boeing official said that it would cost the company millions and rein in future expansion. Those are sobering words from Snohomish County’s largest employer.

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Harmonizing jobs and public health is a hellacious slog, but this can’t be reduced to an either/or proposition. The DOE has a duty to provide accurate, fish-consumption estimates. Then, in the spirit of transparency (and preserving those jobs) the agency needs to work with Boeing and other parties to develop a mitigation strategy.

From the most recent Being Frank column:

Opponents claim federal water quality standards in place here already protect all of us. But how can that be, if we already know the fish consumption rate is wrong? Their answer is that existing rules can include a larger fish consumption rate as long as those who eat more fish accept a higher risk of getting cancer.

Imagine that. What they’re saying is that most people in Washington would be protected by a rate of risk that one in one million people will get cancer from toxins in water. But for anybody who eats more than one seafood meal per month, including Indians, Asians and Pacific Islanders, that risk rate can be as high as one in 10,000. That’s unacceptable. Current state law requires cancer risk rates to protect everyone at the rate of one in a million. That standard should remain unchanged.

There’s no question that seafood is good for us, but it won’t be that way for long if pollution is allowed to contaminate the waters it comes from. It is unjust for Indian people and others who consume a lot of seafood to be at greater risk for getting cancer than everyone else.

Linda Thomas over at MyNorthwest sat down with Robert McClure and took a look at his reporting on the political pressure in the fish consumption rate debate:

The state was finally close to doing that last year, until an email trail McClure uncovered led him to the one company that launched an intense lobbying campaign against the consumption rate change.

“In the correspondence between the Ecology executives and the governor’s office there was one company’s name that came up a lot and that was the Boeing Company,” he says.

In June 2012, Boeing said if Ecology went ahead with plans to make fish safer to eat, it would “cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars and severely hamper its ability to increase production in Renton and make future expansion elsewhere in the state cost prohibitive,” according to an aide to former Governor Chris Gregoire.

1. Robert McClure was on KUOW yesterday to talk about the his coverage of the political pressure in the fish consumption rate debate.

2. High Country News had a great piece on the background and human element of the fish consumption rate.

Last summer, the state put the brakes on the process to increase our unrealistically low fish consumption rate. Now a report by Investigate West gives us a look behind the scenes of the pressure changed the debate.

From Investigate West’s “Business Interests Trump Health Concerns in Fish Consumption Fight“:

Ecology emails show that by mid-summer, the agency already had been trying for months to assure Boeing and other business interests that it was coming up with “implementation rules” that would make it easier to comply with the new pollution limits. Among the ideas floated was allowing businesses up to 50 years to reduce their toxic pollution loads. Such so-called “variances” of up to 40 years still are under consideration, Gildersleeve said in an interview this week.

It’s clear from internal emails obtained by InvestigateWest that Ecology staffers were hearing from industry a lot in the run-up to changing course. For example, the head of the agency, Ted Sturdevant, commented on a Forbes article that identified Washington as one of the top states likely to boom over the next five years.

“Not if we pass new fish consumption rates! At least according to industry,” Sturdevant wrote in an email to co-workers.

You can read the actual emails that make up the report here.