From: Multinational Monitor via Jym Dyer <jym@mica.berkeley.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.activism,talk.environment
Subject: INFO: Alaska: Pulp Mills Come Before Human Health
Followup-To: alt.activism.d,talk.environment
Date: 22 Dec 1992 00:10:16 GMT
Organization: The Naughty Peahen Party Line
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu

[From EcoNet]
[Also Posted to misc.activism.progressive (by Somebody Else)]

================================================================
[Taken from the November 1992 Multinational Monitor.]

Alaska's Troubled Waters

ANCHORAGE -- In order to accommodate the gold mining and pulp
industries, the pro-development administration of Alaska
Governor Wally Hickel is proposing to put human health and
environmental protection on the line by significantly lowering
certain state water quality standards, proposing weak human
health criteria for other standards and allowing for the
continued operation of facilities that are violating state law.

New draft waste water permits issued this spring by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) required pulp mills in
Sitka and Ketchikan to comply with Alaska's existing water
quality standards.

According to the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council (SEACC),
a Juneau-based environmental organization, however, the mills
have never complied with the standards [see "Razing Alaska: The
Destruction of the Tongass Forest, "Multinational Monitor,
July/Aug 1990].  SEACC claims that, instead of enforcing state
regulations, the Hickel administration sped up an ongoing review
of state water quality standards in response to the EPA's action
and proposed regulatory changes which would allow the mills and
other violators to continue polluting at their present levels.

The Alaska state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC)
proposals "are quite clearly driven by the interests of the pulp
mills and the gold mines," says Anthony Turrini, staff counselor
for the National Wildlife Federation in Anchorage.  The most
significant relate to the setting of standards based on human
health criteria.

The proposed standards would allow the Sitka and Ketchikan mills
to dump 85 times more dioxin than recommended by the EPA, and
would permit gold mines to release 250 times more arsenic than
the EPA's standards.  The proposals also allow industry to dump
10 times the agency's recommended standard for chloroform.

According to David Sturdevant, water quality standards
coordinator for the DEC, the EPA's most stringent recommended
risk level for dioxin, chloroform and arsenic is set at a factor
of 10^-5 (meaning a one in 1,000,000 chance of getting cancer
over a lifetime of exposure to a particular substance).  The
DEC has proposed adopting a less stringent 10 risk factor (one
in 100,000 chance).  Sturdevant points out that more than one
half of U.S. states have adopted the less stringent standard.

Sturdevant says that determining risk levels is a complex
process based on scientific data which is not necessarily
conclusive.  "There is no book you can look at," he says.  The
DEC has factored other considerations into its decision to
adopt the higher risk factor.  "This is a social and economic
policy decision," says Sturdevant.  "The state does recognize
the economic concerns involved in [industries] having to meet
stricter standards."

Sturdevant points out that the mills in Sitka and Ketchikan
provide almost 25 percent of the economic base of those areas.
"The Department believes we must be sensitive to the effects
of [stricter] standards on those mills and on the people that
work there," he says.

The Hickel administration has also proposed changing the
definition of "mixing zones," which are legalized pollution
zones where standards for pollutants may be exceeded.  Industry
is currently prohibited from dumping potential and proven
carcinogens for both humans and aquatic life into mixing zones.
According to SEACC, the proposed changes would allow for the
discharge of potential carcinogens, by imposing a prohibition
only if the chemical were a "proven" carcinogen to humans.

Yet another Hickel and DEC proposal would eliminate the
regulation of all hydrocarbons in water and permit toxic
concentrations in unlined tailing ponds and other "wastewater
treatment facilities" to exceed state standards.

Environmentalists and concerned citizens have mobilized
opposition to the revisions during a recently extended public
comment period.  Their input, however, is likely to have little
influence on DEC decisions regarding the standards.  "Public
comment only has a real influence if the government has an open
mind," says Turrini.  "In this case the DEC already has some
very clear objectives."

The EPA must approve the final standards and it has expressed
concern over some of the state revisions.  An October 5 memo
from Sally Marquis, EPA Region 10 water quality standards
coordinator, to Sturdevant spells out the federal agency's
reservations about many DEC proposed changes, including those
for regulating hydrocarbons and mixing zones and for human
health criteria for arsenic and dioxin.  The memo states that
certain revised standards for arsenic and dioxin do not comply
with the Clean Water Act.

Environmentalists fear that Region 10 officials and the DEC will
reach a compromise over the course of the public comment period,
and that the EPA will eventually approve greatly weakened
standards.

Marquis's memo states, "We are hoping that we can resolve many
of these concerns during the remainder of the public comment
period."  And SEACC's Marna Schwartz notes that the EPA's
concerns were only made public under great pressure from
environmentalists.  "It's pretty amazing that both agencies felt
that this should be kept confidential, especially in a state
where the largest employer--commercial fishing--is completely
dependent upon clean water to keep it in business," she says.

 --- Holly Knaus

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From: ACTIV-L via Jym Dyer <jym@mica.berkeley.edu>
Organization: The Naughty Peahen Party Line
Newsgroups: alt.activism,talk.environment
Followup-to: alt.activism.d,talk.environment
Subject: MM: Alaska: Pulp Mills come before human health


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