Eight-Day Hearing Exposes Weaknesses
In Pollution Permit for Sea-Tac Airport

Always seeking to avoid its responsibility for polluting local streams, the Port of Seattle argued strenuously before the Pollution Controls Hearings Board (PCHB) in late July that neither Lake Reba nor the Northwest Ponds are “waters of the State” entitled to full legal protection from Airport-generated pollution.

Pending before the PCHB were appeals against the Airport's NPDES (or “sec. 402”) permit issued by the Department of Ecology in September 1993. The Port appealed its permit first. C.A.S.E. (joined by the Airport Communities Coalition) then filed a cross appeal, seeking stronger controls on Airport pollution. Puget Soundkeeper Alliance then filed its own appeal.

Members of Citizens Against Sea-Tac Expansion (C.A.S.E.) in attendance at the hearing are optimistic that the Board will rule against the Port on several critical points, especially the status of Lake Reba. C.A.S.E. appealed against Ecology's failure to designate Lake Reba as waters of the State. While the Port claims that the lake is an artificial construction built by the Port, testimony at the hearing established the existence of a natural pond on the site, long before the Airport was built. Lake Reba is the result of excavations in an existing streambed in a wetland to increase the storage capacity of that pond.

C.A.S.E. observers also report that Assistant Attorney General Joan Marchioro, representing Ecology, made a compelling case in support of Ecology's designation of the Northwest Ponds as waters of the State. The ponds lie in an historic wetland – local roads by-passed the area, no-one farmed it, and three streams met there.

A Billion-Plus To Create Pollution, But Not a Dime for Treatment

The third overarching issue was additional treatment for polluted waters discharged from the Sea-Tac industrial wastewater treatment plant into Puget Sound. At present, the IWS treatment plant at the south end of the Airport removes petroleum by-products from the run-off, but there is no treatment to remove any of the other regulated pollutants in the wastewater. Especially troubling is the failure to deal with de-icing fluids. The partially-treated effluent is discharged into Puget Sound at a depth of 178 feet at a point 1400 feet offshore. These discharges are toxic, without exception. In 1994, Ecology granted a permit giving the Port 10 years to comply with the law and stop the discharges. That deadline has now passed, but the toxic discharges continue.

By April 1998, the Port's consultants had recommended that the wastewater be sent for full treatment at the approved Metro treatment facility at Renton, before discharge into waters of the State. State and Federal law require polluters to use “all known, available, and reasonable treatment” (‘AKART') to reduce industrial pollution. Treatment of industrial wastewater at publicly-owned treatment plants is a routine part of AKART. The design for the pipeline was to have been completed by August 15, 2003.

The Port missed the August 15, 2003, deadline and then missed the June 30, 2004 deadline. The Port of Seattle advanced several spurious reasons for not complying.

• The Metro plant at Renton does not have the capacity to handle this new load. Not so, testified a responsible Metro official; we can handle it.
  
• The cost of treating the effluent is unreasonable. But the testimony from Metro was that they would charge the Airport their standard rates, based on the pollutants to be removed.
  
• Building the pipeline from SeaTac to Renton is much too expensive. On cross-examination, counsel for C.A.S.E., Rick Poulin, asked the Port's financial expert if it were true that the Port figured it could pay out $1.1 billion for the runway. Answer: Actually, $1.3 billion. But the Port cannot afford to pay a few millions to build the pipeline or to pay the established treatment fees? The Port's attorneys erupted with a storm of objections. “No further questions,” said Mr Poulin.
  

A fourth major issue was the timing for future anti-pollution work at the Airport. As noted above, a prior permit had established the date of June 30, 2004, as the deadline for the Airport's compliance with the “AKART” requirements. The new permit granted the Port an additional three years to come into compliance, with an open-ended provision allowing further extensions into the indefinite future. C.A.S.E. noted several other instances where the Airport was granted unreasonably long periods of time to deal with water pollution, where the permit failed to require interim reports, as well as other irregularities.

A written ruling from the Board is not expected until Fall.

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