Let Washington Make its Own Rules for Clean Water

Clean water keeps our communities safe, protects fish and wildlife, and powers a strong economy.

Washington State has a long record of keeping our water clean. They spent several years researching and developing Human Health Water Quality (HHWQ) standards beginning in 2009 in order to protect our most valuable natural resource.

They developed a set of rules that directly addressed the state’s unique needs.

The federal government officially recognized that the 2016 Washington standards, but it’s important that they don’t change their minds and put an unnecessary burden on the state by reversing their decision.

Tell the EPA to let Washington make its own rules for clean water.

Comments submitted to the EPA, including any personal information that is in the body of the submission, will be posted to regulations.gov and are also made available for in-person viewing at the EPA Docket Center’s Reading Room. Read more at https://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets.

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Dear:

I would like to take this opportunity to submit comments in support of EPA’s Proposal to Withdraw Certain Federal Water Quality Criteria Applicable to Washington State published in the Federal Register on August 6, 2019.
 
The state of Washington has a long-history of strong environmental stewardship and is known for consistently applying stringent standards to protect the quality of all its waters for all the state’s citizenry. In that tradition, Governor Inslee’s Department of Ecology developed highly protective human health water quality criteria through an extensive stakeholder process and submitted them to EPA for approval on August 1, 2016.  Unfortunately, on November 15, 2016, the EPA only partially approved the State’s proposal, rejected many of their standards, and then replaced them with far more stringent federal standards that would be impossible to meet with state-of-the-art stormwater treatment technology.  Setting standards that are out of reach will not protect human health and only serve to increase utility costs for homeowners and business costs for the state’s employers.  I was pleased to see that upon reconsideration, earlier this year the EPA confirmed that Washington’s 2016 criteria were in fact scientifically sound and reversed its earlier decision. 
 
In closing, I agree with the EPA’s decision to enable Washington to implement the standards it originally proposed to the Agency in 2016.  Thank you for your consideration of these comments.

Regards,