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Seattle’s Duwamish River was listed as a federal Superfund site – one of the nation’s most toxic hazardous waste sites – in 2001. In 2014, after thirteen years of planning and community input, EPA issued its cleanup order for the river. That cleanup is now facing a triple threat, as EPA caves to pressure from polluters – the industries and agencies responsible for the pollution and required to pay for cleanup. EPA has proposed three changes to our river cleanup that increase toxic exposures and health risks to our community and undermine our hard-won river cleanup. The EPA has caved to pressure from polluters – the industries and agencies responsible for polluting the river. The EPA cleanup order, issued in 2014 after thirteen years of planning and community input, is now facing a triple threat: EPA scientists have “reassessed” the toxicity of carcinogenic PAHs and now think that it is safe for people to be exposed to higher levels than the current standards allow, EPA is preparing to release a plan that weakens cleanup levels in the last leg of the river, undermining cleanup for the entire river and directly threatening the health of the river’s Native and immigrant fishing communities, EPA proposes to allow Jorgensen Forge, which was fined for leaving behind high levels of PCBs and burying them under backfill, to abandon PCBs in the river bottom, saving the company millions of dollars and posing an immediate threat to people’s health.
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