Rep. Mary Dye: "An environmental crisis in Washington state" | Feb. 14, 2024
Feb 19, 2024
Rep. Mary Dye, R-Pomeroy, ranking Republican on the House Environment and Energy Committee, says Washington state has an environmental crisis with polluted waterways. She says the state has concentrated too much on removing carbon from Washington's air, but in the process, failed to address issues with wastewater and sewage flowing into Puget Sound. Dye has proposed legislation to crack down on municipal treatment plant discharges.
[Music]
you're the ranking Republican on the
house environment and energy Committee
in a recent committee meeting you stated
we have an environmental crisis in
Washington state what did you mean by
that we certainly do we have a lot of
crisis in regards to the environment we
have a salmon crisis we have a water
quality crisis our forest Health crisis
we've got 2.7 million Acres of forest
according to the DNR that are in an
unhealthy state but our water crisis in
particular we have 40% of our Waters
that have been determined to have an
identified pollutant in them but only
15% of those Waters have been tested we
have a crisis for our salmon health and
that's an important crisis that we're
seeing the impacts of as we are
threatening to take out the four lower
Snake River dams we have a litter chis
we have litter all over the place and
while we're working on recycling bills
we're not dealing with the fact that we
have a tremendous amount of litter on
our state's roadways a lot of attention
has been given to air quality in
Washington state but you have voiced
concerns that we have a water quality
issue especially in puges sound so tell
us about your concerns and the bills
you've authored to address this issue
absolutely we've spent an awful lot of
time focusing on air quality
through our climate commitment act and
other programs that are very very
expensive but we aren't addressing water
quality problems in the puges sound and
other parts of the state but in
particular pues sound we have a dead
zone in the PES sound caused by our
wastewater treatment plants who are
currently discharging millions of tons
of nitrates into the PES sound which is
destroying the ecosystem of that
Watershed I have several bills that deal
with that that problem one of the bills
is
1365 which is puga sound water quality
and it forms a process through the
department of ecology to start planning
for tertiary treatment to remove
terrible toxins from the Wastewater
discharge we also have dealt with salmon
safe communities we have another bill
that deals with Wastewater that puts a v
on every gallon of sewage overflow into
Puget s and that money is used to do
salmon restoration projects what's the
status of your water quality bills none
of the water quality bills were able to
progress past the floor of the house the
putas sound water quality Bill looked
like it was promising and it had been on
the runw list but was removed at the
last hour in the fight over the other
bills in the house but that bill is an
important negotiated bill with the
Department of ecology so that they can
actually implement the bill and get
tertiary treatment installed in some of
the worst polluters on the Puget Sound
the session ends on March 7th do you
expect this legislature to do anything
on the water quality issue before it
adjourns I don't expect them to do
anything on the water quality issue and
again this is the second year in a row
that that same bill has made it to the
floor of the house only to get caught up
and negotiated out of the Run list so I
do hope that at some point this
legislature will take water quality
seriously and do something to clean up
the polluted Waters of the Pua sound we
should be focusing on water quality and
doing something good for the environment
in the PES sound but instead we continue
to hammer away on air quality bills that
are very expensive to everyday
[Music]
washingtonians