Yesterday afternoon, the Everett Herald‘s Jerry Cornfield reported that the delay in approving a Washington State budget was truly fishy: “Boeing’s opposition to fish study a sticking point in budget,” went the headline. With a government shutdown to come in fewer than five days, it might seem strange that negotiations are getting hung up on a mundane study of how often people eat fish.
But state industries, including 800-lb. gorilla Boeing, are very nervous about how often you dine on sushi, because that consumption rate factors into an algorithmic assessment of “acceptable” water pollution. Our April 2013 story, “Washington State’s Water-Pollution Regs Assume People Hate Fish,” looked into the Department of Ecology’s struggle to balance a directive from the U.S. EPA with political realities.
Northwest Native American tribes, who eat fish daily, have been pitted against the business community. Industry hackles shot up when Oregon raised its fish consumption rate to 175 grams per day. Washington’s guideline rate, in contrast, is 6.5 grams. Any change on the order of Oregon’s could mean a huge difference in businesses’ liabilities.
For a related story, “How Clean is Our Water? How Clean Should It Be?” we spoke with Boeing’s Terry Mutter. “What we’re asking for is something environmentally beneficial, technically feasible, and economically viable,” he argued, claiming that Boeing wasn’t against cleaner waters, per se, but that the adjustment of a multi-factor formula driven by a single variable, fish consumption, could generate impossible standards.
Cornfield’s story notes that the Senate, in special session, added a request for funds for “a comprehensive study to figure out how much fin fish and shell fish each resident will consume over their lifetime,” though the amount was not specified. Studies of fish consumption, though, aren’t hard to come by, and the ones Ecology relies on have already been given U.S. EPA approval, so it’s not clear what the new study would accomplish besides delay.
“House Democrats and Gov. Jay Inslee,” writes Cornfield, “strongly oppose the Senate approach.” Budget director David Schumacher confirmed for the AP that the issue has taken up “time and attention” during these last few days of budget negotiations.
