Western Center for Environmental Information
(opinion)

Idaho’s 962 Polluted Streams

A history of mismanagement, misuse, and misunderstanding.

The 303d GIS map depicts in red, the 962 polluted stream segments that cover almost the entire state. Note that the Selway-Bitterroot, Frank Church, Gospel Hump and Sawtooth Wilderness Areas are almost free of pollution. Most of the National Forests of central and northern Idaho are heavily damaged outside the protected wilderness areas from logging, mining and livestock overgrazing. It is no wonder that U.S. District Court Judge William Dwyer ruled in 1994 that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) hadn’t enforced, and the State of Idaho hadn’t complied with the Federal Clean Water Act.

For 22 years after Congress mandated ,through the Clean Water Act, that each state compile a list of polluted streams (Water quality Limited Segments, or “WQLS”) and develop a schedule for cleaning them up, the State of Idaho refused. EPA looked the other way. When the Idaho Sporting Congress (ISC) and the Idaho Conservation League (ICL) sued in 1994, the State and EPA maintained that only 36 Idaho stream segments were polluted by sediment (mud),agricultural runoff or toxics. Judge Dwyer rejected this list and ordered EPA to gather additional, available information and revise it. EPA ultimately documented a minimum of 962 segments.

However, the State and EPA refused to develop an adequate schedule for cleanup, proposing to take 150 years to clean up the streams. ISC and ICL again sued in 1995 and again Judge Dwyer ruled against EPA, declaring 150 years a ridiculous time schedule. Ultimately, ISC and ICL negotiated a 15 year cleanup schedule.

APSRS first published the Idaho Environmental Scrapbook containing the GIS map showing 962 streams and also established on the internet the GIS map and list of those 962 streams in the summer of 1996 That information is available on the internet at www.ecoguild.com. Click on wcei at the bottom of the ecoguild home page.

The reactions to the size of Idaho’s WQLS list from political leaders, industry and the media were shock, denial and disbelief. The media, including all daily newspapers, television and radio stations received the Idaho Environmental Scrapbook detailing the issue. Other than pro forma reporting on Judge Dwyer’s rulings, they responded with a large yawn. That Idaho’s water quality has come apart at the stream’s seams elicited literal y little concern even when presented with seventeen pages of the actual severely damaged streams and a GIS map depicting an ecological war zone. Either they simply disbelieved Judge Dwyer and the EPA, or adjudged that water quality in the arid West was unworthy of their attention. Whatever the case, the Idaho media indisputably dropped the ball.

The mining, logging and grazing industries, along with their political reporters, were shocked by the list. Draped in undeniable culpability, they publicly decried the minimum list of 962 streams as an exaggeration, despite the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality stating publicly that an additional 1,500 streams qualified for the WQLS list. Industry offered only avowed opposition to cleanup as their political agenda.

Idaho’s political establishment, the most Republican in the Nation, with deep, traditional monetary and philosophical ties to the polluting industries, took a position opposite that of their great reformer Teddy Roosevelt by joining with industry to undermine Judge Dwyer’s rulings. Governor Phil Batt, upon taking office grossly misled the general public by declaring Idaho’s environment in “good shape”. The state legislature attempted to legislate water quality rules into oblivion, setting up local committees to ”review” standards indefinitely, delaying to allow pollution to continue unabated. Judge Dwyer ordered cleanup to begin despite their attempts. Idaho’s Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth set the tone for the entire Congressional delegation’s opposition to water cleanup and fisheries restoration when she advertised extensively (including an “endangered salmon bake”) that Idaho’s salmon weren’t endangered because one could purchase Alaska salmon in cans at grocery stores, and announcing her and the delegation’s plan to allow the State to take over two of the biggest sources of pollution--Forest Service and BLM lands--to permit even more pollution.

It is no wonder, given the abject failure of political representatives at Idaho’s public interest that our sockeye salmon exist only in test tubes and hatcheries, our chinook salmon, bull trout are edging onto the Endangered Species list. The massive, pervasive destruction of Idaho’s watersheds also is destroying habitat for many wildlife species.

APSRS believes that unless the Clean Water Act is substantially strengthened, and the current carte blanche political and legal red carpet for the Forest Service, BLM and logging, mining and grazing industries is rolled up, these species and Idaho’s wildlife resources of national significance will be lost within the next decade.

Drainage’s represented in this GIS Summary, and the identified pollutants are:

Drainage	No. Streams		Priority Rating			Pollutant
		low	medium	high	sediments	nutrients	both	other
Bear River	44	44	0	0	21	22	23	1
Upper Snake	179	162	1	9	98	75	129	6
Southwest	177	168	5	4	0	0	31	3
Salmon	170	146	0	4	90	18	22	10
Clearwater	168	161	2	5	102	42	69	8
Panhandle	174	147	0	37	113	30	93	27
Totals	962	828	8	59	424	187	367	55

What is most revealing about these numbers is that the list doesn’t increase the priority of streams that have two or more factors for listing; many doubly degraded streams still remain low priority. APSRS takes issue with this approach. Such streams definitely merit more than little or no attention.

Recently at the ICBEMP conference (Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project) held in Spokane, Washington in March, 1997 further water quality information about stream pollution totals was uncovered:

Water Quality impaired information is presented as miles of streams and rivers that are water quality limited:

	Any Impairment	Temperature Impairment	Nutrient Impairment	Sediment Impairment	Flow Impairment
Miles of Streams	10024	2632	3459	8812	2714
US Forest Service	3000	455	306	2568	478
BLM	1350	513	391	1187	506

(these totals account for streams that are not on BLM or Forest Service Land.)

Despite these daunting totals, some progress is being made. The ISC and ICL lawsuit forced the Federal EPA to develop a TMDL schedule since the State had refused to do so. Such schedules, or “Total Maximum Daily Loads”(TMDL’s) were supposed to be developed over 20 years ago. The State has recently hired 16 additional staff members to work with EPA to develop actual TMDL’s for the 962 streams. And ISC and ICL won another lawsuit last year forcing the EPA to develop water quality standards for Idaho’s inadequate ones, most particularly improved water quality standards for endangered bull trout.

See Judge Dwyer’s ruling....