Industrial facilities dumped nearly three and a half million pounds
of toxic chemicals into Iowa’s waterways, over 700,000 pounds of which
were discharged into the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers, according to a
report released today by Environment Iowa titled, Wasting Our
Waterways: Industrial Toxic Pollution and the Unfulfilled Promise of
the Clean Water Act
“Tyson Fresh Meats up in Perry released over
a tenth of that figure – 391,300 lbs. directly into the Raccoon River,”
said Eric Nost, state associate with Environment Iowa.
Nost was
joined by Shannan Garretson, water program legal analyst with the Iowa
Environmental Council, and Mike Delaney, president of the Raccoon River
Watershed Association, an all-volunteer, non-profit group dedicated to
the preservation and enhancement of the river and its watershed.
Delaney
says that because of poor water quality, “now paddlers and hunters are
complaining about rashes, sores and sick dogs due to contact with the
rivers and lakes in the Raccoon watershed.”
The Environment Iowa
report documents and analyzes the dangerous levels of pollutants
discharged into Iowa and the nation's waters by compiling toxic
chemical releases reported to the U.S. EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory
(TRI) for 2007, the most recent data available.
Other major findings of the report include:
- Nationally, 232 million pounds of toxic chemicals were
released to American waterways during 2007 by industrial facilities.
- Tyson Fresh Meats released 1,388,270 pounds of toxic
chemical waste into the Iowa and Cedar Rivers at Columbus Junction.
This plant was the largest reported polluter of toxic chemicals in the
state in 2007.
- Nitrates account for 90% of the volume of all TRI
discharges. These are the same compounds, typically associated with
farm runoff, that less than a month ago contributed to an algae bloom
which prompted the city to stop drawing from the Raccoon for drinking
water.
“Luckily, there are common-sense steps that can be taken to turn the tide against toxic pollution of our waters,” added Nost.
In
order to curb the toxic pollution threatening the Des Moines, the
Raccoon, and other bodies of water, Environment Iowa recommends the
following:
- 1. Pollution Prevention: Industrial facilities should
reduce their toxic discharges in to waterways by switching from
hazardous chemicals to safer alternatives.
- 2. Tough permitting and enforcement: EPA and state
agencies should issue permits with tough, numeric limits for each type
of toxic pollution discharged, ratchet down those limits over time, and
enforce those limits with credible penalties.
- 3. Protect all waters: The federal government should
adopt policies to clarify that the Clean Water Act applies to all of
our waterways. This includes the thousands of headwaters and small
streams for which jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act has been
called into question, as a result of recent court decisions.
"We urge Congress and the President to listen to the public’s
demands for clean water. They should act to protect all of our lakes,
rivers and streams from toxic pollution," concluded Nost.
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