Washington Board Orders Wastewater Treatment Plant to Implement Stronger Pollution Controls

Washington State’s Pollution Control Hearings Board issued an order yesterday that will finally require King County to limit nutrient pollutants like nitrogen and phosphorous from its West Point water treatment plant. These pollutants, primarily from municipal wastewater in the South Sound, have gone unaddressed for decades, degrading water quality in Puget Sound and causing harm to the ecology of this extraordinary marine ecosystem by killing fish and causing toxic algal bloom outbreaks.

The order stems from an appeal brought last year by Puget Soundkeeper Alliance, represented by Earthjustice, that asked the Hearings Board to require controls for these harmful pollutants, similar to technology in use by many wastewater treatment plants across the country, including in Olympia.

West Point is the single largest wastewater discharger of nutrient pollution to Puget Sound, yet the individual discharge permit for West Point has never required controls with effluent limits for nutrient pollution discharges to the Puget Sound. Under yesterday’s Hearings Board order, Washington’s Department of Ecology must now ensure West Point includes effluent limits for nutrient pollution. The Hearings Board invalidated the permit for West Point finding that it was “inconsistent with state and federal law requiring National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits to include effluent limits for nutrients[.]”

“Puget Sound water quality has become significantly degraded, to the point that aquatic life and area residents are being harmed,” said Kelsey Furman, Puget Soundkeeper’s Staff Attorney. “It’s past time for Washington to finally address this and modernize our outdated sewage treatment. Reducing nutrient discharges flowing into the Sound is something we can fix — and that legally must be done. The Board spoke loud and clear — Ecology must set limits on nutrient pollution from West Point — indeed from all dischargers of nutrient pollution — to preserve and protect the ecology and water quality of the Puget Sound.”

“This decision by the Board requires King County to stem the flow of harmful pollution that violates state water quality standards, causes toxic algal blooms, kills fish, and leaves orcas hungry,” added Earthjustice Attorney Jaimini Parekh. “It is a critical first step on something that has been ignored for decades — the law requires wastewater polluters to apply technology to limit all pollution that they discharge to the nation’s waters. It is time that West Point and all the other unlimited pollution discharges from municipal wastewater plants be required to limit this harmful pollution in the iconic Puget Sound.”

The appeal challenged the plant’s federal and state wastewater discharge permits for failing to meet the requirements and intent of the federal Clean Water Act, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations, Washington State pollution control law, and Washington Department of Ecology regulations. The West Point Wastewater Treatment Plant serves much of Seattle and King County. Increased nutrient pollution flowing into Puget Sound due to population growth and a lack of adequate controls on sewage flowing into the sound, combined with warming waters from climate change, have contributed to ecosystem-wide marine water quality issues.

Background

Puget Sound is suffering from chronic nutrient pollution that has run unchecked for decades from municipal wastewater treatment plants including King County but also Tacoma, Everett, and other smaller plants. Despite legal requirements to do so in both state and federal law, Ecology has allowed this pollution to remain unchecked; a condition that has now led to Puget Sound failing to meet basic water quality standards for dissolved oxygen.

High levels of pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorous act like fertilizers fueling excess algal and aquatic plant growth. When these algae and plants die and decompose, it uses up oxygen that marine life needs to survive.

Depleted oxygen levels and excess nutrients can cause marine ecosystem imbalances, public health risks, loss of critical habitat, acceleration of ocean acidification that harms shellfish and other aquatic life, proliferation of some species like jellyfish, and significant overall declines in fish, aquatic life, and biodiversity. Low oxygen levels are particularly harmful to species like salmon. These changes can cause a domino effect across the ecosystem that affects the entire food chain, from aquatic life on the sea floor to salmon and the Southern Resident orcas that are starving and on the brink of extinction.

In order to comply with the law, the Hearings Board held the West Point permit must be revised to limit the amount of nutrient pollution discharged in wastewater released into Puget Sound. These limitations, by law, must ensure wastewater discharges authorized by the permit will apply all known, achievable, and reasonable technologies for controlling nutrient pollution and ensure that the discharges will not cause or contribute to violations of any water quality standards, but specifically the dissolved oxygen standards.

A 2019 Ecology Department report found that since 2006 about a quarter of Puget Sound has failed to meet oxygen standards mandated by the federal Clean Water Act. The Washington Department of Ecology has studied the problem and maintains a webpage and an explainer video about nutrient pollutants, but has not yet required effluent limits that stem the flow of nutrient pollutants that are deteriorating water quality in the Puget Sound. Ecology has found that nutrients discharged from wastewater treatment plants have a reasonable potential to contribute to existing low dissolved oxygen levels, below state water quality criteria, in the Salish Sea.