Long suspected of bending over for big polluters, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality is accused in a new lawsuit of grabbing its ankles for scrap-metal giant Schnitzer Steel and two other Portland companies.
According to a lawsuit filed Monday in Multnomah County Circuit Court, DEQ was far too lenient when it issued storm-water permits last November for Schnitzer Steel Industries Inc., Diversified Marine Inc. and Zidell Marine Corp.
Issued under a federally mandated licensing plan, the permits allow those companies to discharge pollutants that will end up in stormwater that flows to the Willamette and Columbia rivers.
The lawsuit, brought by the Portland-based Northwest Environmental Defense Center and Hood River-based Columbia Riverkeeper, says DEQ ignored concerns raised by environmentalists and instead made changes suggested by polluters.
DEQ spokeswoman Joanie Stevens-Schwenger and DEQ interim director Dick Pedersen declined to comment on the lawsuit. Pedersen is named in the lawsuit along with DEQ and the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission.
According to the lawsuit, DEQ provides “lenient, under-protective permit conditions and has impaired and will continue to impair the environmental quality of the Willamette and Columbia rivers.”
The lawsuit says the environmental groups pointed out during the permit process that DEQ’s rules were flawed, its records were inadequate and outdated, and that the companies were discharging more pollutants than the permits would cover.
But the lawsuit says DEQ made few changes as a result of those concerns. The lawsuit says DEQ responded instead to concerns raised by “the regulated community,” including changing the language of the permits after the public comment period had ended.
“Whereas the permit proposal issued for public notice and comment stated that all discharges must ‘meet’ water quality standards, the final permit states that discharges merely ‘must not cause a violation’ of water quality standards. DEQ made this change by adopting language proposed by facilities that will be regulated under this general permit,” the lawsuit says.
The permit covers copper, zinc and lead but ignores a host of other pollutants that are often discharged in industrial stormwater, the lawsuit says. Even where the permit requires monitoring for specific toxins, it “lacks clear enforcement mechanisms and … allows significant delays of compliance,” the lawsuit says.
According to the lawsuit, Zidell and Schnitzer have long histories of pollution violations.
Zidell exceeded its zinc and copper benchmarks on almost every report from 2003 to 2006, the lawsuit says. The company mentions in its application that it stores hazardous products at its facility under the west end of the Ross Island Bridge, the lawsuit says. But according to the lawsuit, the company never explained how it handles those products. According to DEQ records, the soil and groundwater at its facility show extensive contamination in the last five years, the lawsuit says.
As for Schnitzer, the lawsuit says there’s a “lengthy history of non-compliance” at its North Portland scrap-metal plant, including exceeding its zinc benchmark in every report since 2003. According to the lawsuit, Schnitzer admits in its application that heavy metals are potentially polluting its stormwater discharges, but it provides no further information on which types of metal or how much.
The lawsuit was filed by attorney Melissa Powers at the Portland-based Pacific Environmental Advocacy Center. It asks the court to declare that DEQ violated the U.S. Clean Water Act and Oregon law, cancel the permits and award the environmental groups their attorney fees plus “such other relief as the court deems just.”
Read about more Juicy Suits here.
I hope for the day when DEQ steps up to the plate to properly implement the law. By focusing on the guiding law’s purposes and goals, hopefully DEQ can remind itself that the role DEQ plays in regulating industry under the Clean Water Act extends beyond making it easier for pollutors to bank a profit.
It is simply unconscionable that Oregon DEQ would allow major industrial players to discharge massive volumes of the same toxic pollutants at issue in major clean-up efforts, when relatively straightforward pollution reduction measures and best management practices can prevent those pollutants from getting entering our rivers. I know that when it rains, it rains, but DEQ can and should require more.
Good point. Plus clean-up measures result in investment in local jobs and increasingly local green technology and infrastructure. Its not like the money that is spent keeping pollution out of the water flows to China (like Schnitzer’s scrap).
I fish near Schnitzer- check out the property sometime on Google Earth- what a mess. The family makes millions and they can’t spend a little money to keep their muck out of our public waters? DEQ turns a blind eye. Thanks for enviro groups and lawers.
DEQ where are you? Time to call in Scooby-Doo. DEQ’s failure to enforce anything leaves environmental protection in the hands of volunteers/students at NEDC and PEAC, which do a much better job at enforcement.
Governor K.,
Make my day,
Ain’t you got nuthin’ to say?
Our bowler in chief is throwing gutter balls. Asleep at the switch while DEQ and Oregon Department of Justice aid and abet polluters.
Thank you NEDC and CRK for doing such great work. It’s so sad that groups like these with such limited resources have to do the work that multi-million dollar funded DEQ won’t. DEQ is supposed to watch the polluters, but who’s watching DEQ? Thanks wweek and James Pitkin for taking that on.
For the curious, the plant is here: http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&client=firefox-a&ie=UTF8&q=schnitzer+steel&near=Portland,+OR&fb=1&cid=0,0,16410639175075891680&t=h&om=0&ll=45.609444,-122.77889&spn=0.003355,0.007296&z=17&iwloc=A
what about the fish,
who is DEQ, must be Politics, the business regulate themselves, how nice it is,
The State of Oregon should be sued, the Indians should sue for lack of fish in the willamett, for the high rise in Copper, do know what that does to fish, a just a little, not a lot, The Snitzers, what can you say for your selves, the rich treating mother nature like its ash tray, wow, sounds very British in a way, the snobbyness,
The people VS the STate of OREGON, Gov. Ted Koolumghousky, there in bed, what lax laws and enforcement , but, its Buziness, THe Oregon way, Look AT TROJaAn – the fish grow bigger due to the wamer watters around it, just go fish there, how much did this mess cost the taxpaer? RaterPayer, Oregon is Raped again, Economic Rape, by the rich, selling it all out, Oregon 4 SAle.
Its buziness, Snitzer way, Thank you. They have dumped a lot more than we can comprehend, and DEQ does only what it is told, POLICY, and BAd Policy, its the STATE, THE STATE has let us way down, down down the drain, with the copper and the lead, to all the dead fish, the smelly slimmey little ones that never said a thing Smelting away, the Salmon gone with the copper down the river, to the Ocean, to surf, to fish no more take it away, with the lead, over due it, flush it down the drain, Why do it, why not Save the Salmon, Destroy it all, pave it all, You GO Snitzer STell like steelhead jump.
Duh!! This is newsworthy, surprising and controversial, because……
The DEQ, the EPA, and the 4 ministries of Oceania- George Orwell was quite the visionary.
And to think 2nd hand smoke is considered more news worthy than the unchecked dumping of heavy metals and assorted toxins into our watershed. I wonder if this story will even make the back page of The Oregonian. What a sad joke we’ve fallen for.
I worked my entire career in the chemical industry in New Jersey, California and Michigan. Before I moved here, I rarely saw situations where regulators worked so hard to assure polluters were accomodated! Oregon has strong environmental laws-just substandard enforcement.
We are in a little earlier stage of a similar situation with Lakeside dump in Beaverton. Lakeside has been discharging stormwater and process water without a permit for years. At this point we’re hoping that DEQ does the right thing with a careful review before they issue a permit. This story doesn’t give me much encouragement!
I seriously doubt Schnitzer, who profits from SELLING scrap metal is "dumping…heavy metals and assorted toxins into our watershed." Is it at all feasible that WWeek (a publication I sincerely enjoy reading on a weekly basis) might be posting a "file footage" picture of a pipe dumping dirty water and not actually showing what’s going on in an effort to reach the Activist-First, Assess-Entire-Situation-Second, crowd? Wouldn’t one think that Schnitzer, a RECYCLING company, is trying to get a typically dirty industry as clean as they can by systematically trying to improve their processes? I would not doubt, at all, that Schnitzer is continuously trying to update their outdated stormwater infrastructure. Schnitzer’s been around for over 100 years, has always tried to do the best for this city and without them there would be no Portland as any of us know it. Let’s give them a chance to show us thier good efforts in cleaning up an industry that is incredibly hard to keep clean (espescially when they operate on land that was once an oil storage and shipbuilding location before they purchased the parcel)!