In a report released yesterday afternoon from Environment Washington, a statewide, citizen-based environmental advocacy organization, it was announced that industrial facilities dumped more than 193,000 pounds of toxic chemicals into the Yakima, Pend Oreille and Spokane rivers. The report, “Wasting Our Waterways: Industrial Toxic Pollution and the Unfulfilled Promise of the Clean Water Act” also found that 1.3 million pounds of toxic chemicals were discharged into Washington’s waterways in 2007. According to the press release, “the Environment Washington report documents and analyzes the dangerous levels of pollutants discharged in to America’s waters by compiling toxic chemical releases reported to the U.S. EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory for 2007, the most recent data available.”
*photo found on Spokane County website.
Here are some major findings of the report:
Pend Oreille River was ranked 3rd in the state for most toxic discharges, with more than 178,000 pounds discharged in 2007. The river was ranked 9th in the state in 2007 for the amount of reproductive toxics discharged into the waterway.
Ponderay Newsprint Co, located in Usk, released more than 178,000 pounds of toxic chemical waste into the Pend Oreille River in 2007. The facility was the 3rd largest reported polluter of toxic chemicals in Washington in 2007.
More than 14,000 pounds of toxics were dumped into the Yakima River and more than 400 pounds into the Spokane River in 2007.
Nationally, 232 million pounds of toxic chemicals were released into American waterways during 2007 by industrial facilities. More than 1.3 million pounds of toxic chemicals were released into Washington’s waterways.