|
The Pollution Control Hearings
Board has set aside two weeks in July 2004 for hearing
three appeals challenging
the water-pollution permit ('NPDES permit') recently
issued in a renewed form to Sea-Tac Airport by the
Department of Ecology. Separate appeals were filed by Airport Communities Coalition
and Citizens Against Sea-Tac Expansion, by Puget Soundkeeper
Alliance, and by the Port of Seattle. The cases have been
consolidated for hearing.
One principal issue in the appeals is
timing. The Port complains that it is being given too little
time
to
achieve
pollution
control. C.A.S.E. and ACC say that the permit allows too
much time for the Airport to come into compliance. The
Airport has been subject to permits of this type since
1980.
A second issue is the monitoring of polluted waters. The
Port wants to restrict future monitoring to those discharge
points where excessive pollution has been detected in the
past. In other words, the Port says that until it is caught
in the act of polluting, the State should not be watching
for violations.
Pre-hearing activity sometimes results in settlement of
some issues. Closer to the hearing date, Truth
in Aviation will review the issues in detail.
The dates set for the hearings are Monday
through Friday, 12-16 July and Monday through Friday, 19-23
July. Rick Poulin, representing ACC and C.A.S.E., expects
that serious pre-trial discovery, & pre-hearing conferences,
may begin in January.
|
