Conservation groups are suing the city of Tacoma, Washington, U.S.A., alleging the municipality’s wastewater discharge is poisoning Chinook salmon in the Puget Sound.
“Despite scientists’ years of having demonstrated harm to Puget Sound Chinook from Tacoma’s discharge of personal care products, synthetic hormones, and industrial chemicals, [the Environmental Protection Agency] and the Department of Ecology have done absolutely nothing to prevent it,” Northwest Environmental Advocates Executive Director Nina Bell said in a statement. “We’re stepping up to stop Tacoma’s pollution because the regulatory agencies have long stepped away from doing their jobs.”
According to Northwest Environmental Advocates and the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), contaminants are entering Puget Sound through Tacoma’s treated wastewater, leading to decreased growth and reproductive problems in Chinook salmon. The groups claim studies show Tacoma’s wastewater reduces Chinook survival rates by nearly half, and fish exposed to the contaminants present in the treated sewage act as if they’re starving.
“As a result of this [contaminants of emerging concern] poisoning, these salmon cannot breed or reproduce, grow, eat, fight off disease, maintain proper balance and function in their bodies and brains, compete for limited resources, or survive as well as they otherwise would,” the groups said in a notice to Tacoma officials. “In other words, discharges of CECs by the facility cause actual injury and death to ESA-listed Puget Sound Chinook salmon.”
On 8 April, the two conservation groups announced …
