A recent study has found toxicants remaining in the Duwamish River could harm neighboring communities until at least 2050, despite a federal proposal to clean up the contaminated waterway.
The finding comes from a draft Health Impact Assessment (HIA) conducted by the University of Washington (UW) School of Public Health, the nonprofit Just Health Action and the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition.
Released earlier this month, the assessment determined that even after the cleanup, a toxic brew of contaminants such as lead, arsenic and mercury will likely remain a lingering presence in the river, sediment and resident sea life.
BJ Cummings, executive director of Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition, said the recent assessment examined the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA proposal from a social-equity perspective. She said it was an opportunity to investigate how to mitigate the cleanup’s negative impacts. The ultimate goal for any cleanup plan is to ensure efforts to clean the river benefit everyone who uses it, she said.
“We can’t have a cleanup that’s safe enough for kayakers and not safe enough for fishers or tribal members,” she said.
The assessment found that although a future cleanup will mean resident fish and shellfish will be less contaminated then they are today, they will probably still be unsafe for people to eat. The report states fishing advisories on the Duwamish will be the most restrictive in Puget Sound and would be “required for at least 40 years.”
The persistence of the toxicants could have deep repercussions for the health and financial stability of particular communities: residents from South Park and Georgetown; members of the Duwamish, Muckleshoot and Suquamish tribes; subsistence fishers; and local workers.
The HIA recommended the EPA undertake a number of measures to benefit local communities, including promoting safer fishing, working with tribes over treaty rights and using “green remediation” policies.
The draft assessment is a response to an EPA proposal to clean up a five-mile stretch of the Duwamish, which contains more than 40 toxic substances including human-made organic pollutants known as PCBs. Many of the toxins in the waterway, its sediment and some of its resident fish and shellfish are known carcinogens. (Salmon, which swim quickly through the waterway, have been deemed safe to eat.)
In 2001, the EPA declared the lower waterway a Superfund site, naming it one of the most polluted locations in the country. The federal proposal combines numerous cleanup actions, including removal of contaminated sediment, capping or covering some toxic sediment with clean materials, and natural and enhanced recovery programs, which in some instances would let the contaminants naturally dissipate.
Even though the EPA drafted the proposal, the city of Seattle and King County are responsible for the work. It’s estimated that the cleanup will take 17 years, though no start date has been proposed. EPA estimates the work will cost $305 million.
EPA officials hope to issue a final plan in early 2014.