Will it be safe to eat fish from the Duwamish?
At issue is just how much pollution needs to be removed from the river
A chinook salmon's iridescent scales gleam under the street lamps of the First Avenue Bridge. Blood drips from its gills, soaking into the wooden pier. The smells of fresh fish, creosote and diesel exhaust mingle.
"Pure chrome," says a pleased Phil Hamilton, nodding at the fish pulled from the Duwamish River, a Superfund site. Safeway will pay a Muckleshoot Tribe fisherman more than $100 for the fish -- close to 30 pounds -- once it is cleaned and iced.
Hamilton's comment referred to the salmon's bright, metallic color. But his remark carried an unfortunate and unintended double meaning. Chromium was a major pollutant historically in the area surrounding the river, emanating from a chrome-plating plant in nearby South Park.
Health authorities condone eating salmon out of the Duwamish River up to four times a month. But some tribal members are consuming far more -- eating it daily, in some cases.
Another tribe wants to gather clams from the polluted river after it's cleaned up -- but is criticizing the federal government for telling big Duwamish polluters and landowners to count on artificially low consumption rates.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, to justify those lower rates, cited a study of a third tribe that doesn't even fish the Duwamish -- and eats a lot less seafood.
The big polluters and landowners tried to take that a step further. Directly disobeying EPA as they estimated risks from eating Duwamish seafood, they tried to bury information on high consumption rates of the Suquamish tribe, which actually fishes the area.
EPA, in effect, split the difference.
It also allowed the polluters and landowners to totally ignore contamination in salmon.
The result of all this, critics say: Lower estimates of how much seafood will be eaten will translate into less pollution being cleaned up.
"Government seems to think its job is to make things seem not as bad as they are," said James Rasmussen, a member of the Duwamish tribal council. "It's kind of like the great Oz -- pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
At the core of the dispute is whether the river should be cleaned up to accommodate the higher fishing rates tribes desire -- or write it off as a place no one will be able to rely on fishing regularly for sustenance.
The landowners and polluters -- The Boeing Co., the city of Seattle, King County and the Port of Seattle -- are suggesting that subsistence fishing is out of the question, because they can't get the river clean enough no matter how much they spend.
"People are going to have to ask themselves: Are these (high-consumption) scenarios meaningful for me?" said Martin Baker, the city of Seattle's point man on the cleanup.
But, he acknowledged, "They're obviously meaningful for the tribes."
Continue reading this article from the Seattle P-I:
Will it be safe to eat fish from the Duwamish?
