Justice Delayed

Outgoing Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson made environmental justice a priority at the agency. As her tenure draws to a close, EPA released its Plan EJ 2014: Progress Report in January, summarizing the agency's considerable advances toward this important goal. The EPA deserves accolades for the seriousness with which it has treated the issue and for the progress it has made to address the unique and disproportionate burdens that environmental contamination visits on American Indian tribes and their members, on communities of color, and on low-income people. It is a pity, then, that EPA touts among its "key accomplishments" its role in overseeing Oregon's belated adoption of water quality standards that are more protective of tribal people and others who consume fish. EPA actually had to be sued in order to play this role. And EPA is taking the same lackadaisical stance elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest, allowing years to pass by while grossly underprotective standards remain in place. Tribes have long recognized that degraded environments mean both depletion and contamination of the fish, including shellfish, on which they depend - and to which they have unique rights, including rights secured by treaties and other agreements with the United States. Tribes have worked to clean up and prevent toxic contamination of aquatic environments, among other things by ensuring water quality standards (WQS) adequately protective of all those who eat fish. Fish consumption is the primary route of human exposure to a host of harmful contaminants including dioxins, PCBs, PAHs, and methylmercury. The amount of fish people consume, therefore, helps determine water quality standards - the more fish people eat, the cleaner the water needs to be to ensure that those people are not adversely affected by toxics in the water. The states of Washington, Idaho, and Alaska set standards on the assumption that people there eat just twelve fish meals per year - or 6.5 grams/day. This "fish consumption rate" (FCR) is based on a survey of the general U.S. population conducted back in 1973-74.