The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is putting pressure on the state of Alaska for failing to update water pollution rules.
On Thursday, the EPA issued a formal determination that the state should update pollution limits that are based in part on the amount of fish consumed by state residents.
Under federal law, those limits are supposed to be reviewed every three years, but Alaska hasn’t updated its limits since 2003.
The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation has been working since 2013 on an updated list of water quality standards, but despite informing the EPA last fall that a draft would be ready for inspection by the end of the year, it has not been published none.
“EPA has determined that new and revised water quality standards for Alaska are needed to protect the health of Alaska residents. EPA prefers that the State of Alaska address this determination by updating its water quality standards. If not, EPA is prepared to intervene and today we have taken the first step,” said Caleb Shaffer, acting water division director for EPA Region 10, which covers Alaska.
Fish consumption is a key factor in setting water pollution limits for nearly 100 different individual contaminants, including mercury and the insecticide DDT, under the simple principle that contaminated water produces contaminated fish, and eating contaminated fish can make people sick. someone.
Currently, Alaska bases its water pollution guidelines on the notion that residents eat an average of 6.5 grams of fish per day, an amount that fits on a cracker.
That figure was set in 1992 by the EPA as a general estimate for Americans nationwide.
Alaska set its 2003 limits on that figure “and has not revised them … since,” the EPA said Thursday.
Meanwhile, the EPA, Alaska Native tribes and local environmental groups have said they believe the state should use a much higher estimate of how much fish Alaskans eat. This would result in stricter standards for clean water.
In 2015, the Southeast Alaska Conservation Coalition requested that DEC work with an estimate of 175 grams per day for Alaskans who rely on subsistence crops.
“The state of Alaska is responsible for deciding how much pollution is safe in the water,” said Maggie Rabb, executive director of SEACC. “And that is related to the amount of seafood we eat. And when they deliberately and consciously underestimate the amount of seafood we eat, that means their determination of what a safe level of contamination is is not using solid data or science. And that is a problem for us.”
Even the State itself claims that fish consumption levels are too low.
In 2019, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game published a study that found that urban Alaskans consume an average of 8.9 grams per day, and in rural areas, the figure is much higher: an average of almost 195 grams per day in western Alaska.
That finding means Alaskans could be exposed to significantly more water pollution than residents of other states.
Compounding the problem is the state’s decision to set the acceptable rate of cancer caused by pollution at 1 in 100,000. Other states have adopted a stricter limit of 1 per 1,000,000 or 1 per 10,000,000.
“We commend the EPA’s action. It is in the interest of all Alaskans to have clean, safe, healthy water free of contamination, and there is no reason for the state of Alaska to use fish consumption figures that we all know are wildly inaccurate, especially when that estimate guides the amount of pollution. allowed in our fish-producing rivers,” said Mary Catharine Martin, communications director for SalmonState, an environmental organization.
Gene McCabe, director of the DEC’s water division, said the EPA’s determination didn’t tell his agency anything new.
“I think it’s their way of saying, ‘We’re formally declaring that action needs to be taken.’ We have known about it for several years and we are working on the project. It’s a momentous task and the staff has really been working hard on it,” he said.
He said it’s reasonable to think the state’s new limits will be ready in the next six to 12 months, but he declined to say whether the DEC limits will be based on a higher estimate of fish consumption.
“We’re still deliberating on that,” he said. “The best I can tell is that the fish consumption rate is based on data obtained from fish consumption within the state of Alaska.”
That would be a change from current practice, but it’s not yet clear how Alaskans or the EPA will receive the new figure, if any.
In Florida, for example, EPA officials sent a similar warning in 2022 to state officials there. Florida never finalized new rules, and late last year the EPA proposed a new federal rule for them. It would apply to more than 70 limits for individual chemicals. That rule remains under discussion and deliberation.
Originally published by the Alaska Beacon, an independent, nonpartisan news organization covering Alaska state government.
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