Ecology Adopts New Water Quality Standards

The Courthouse Journal
Washington Association of County Officials
Washington State Association of Counties
July 3, 2003

The Department of Ecology recently announced the adoption of changes to the surface water quality standards for the state of Washington (Chapter 173- 201A WAC). This represents completion of the first comprehensive revision to the standards in over a decade and reflect the latest scientific information and federal requirements pertaining to keeping Washington waters clean and safe for people, fish and wildlife.

Ecology received over 1,400 comment letters or testimonials during the public hearing phase of the rulemaking. In response to these comments and suggestions, several issues were withdrawn from the final rule package, and many changes were made to those that remained. Some of the highlights of the new standards include:

Temperature Criteria Revisions:

• The adoption of temperature criteria to protect bull trout and Dolly Varden, two of our state's most temperature sensitive fish species.
• Modest increases in the summer temperature criteria for most of the state's waters that support salmon and trout.
• A directive to apply temperature criteria to protect spawning where it is determined the summertime criteria by themselves would not be likely to protect this sensitive life stage.

Water Quality Antidegradation:

• A process for ensuring that degradation of the state's high quality waters is allowed only where it is in the public interest and less degrading alternatives are not readily available.
• A program that can be used to set aside from future degradation some of the most pristine waters in the state where there is strong community support.

Bacterial Criteria:

A new indicator of bacteria contamination that will protect humans who boat, fish, and play along some of our more industrialized marine waters (i.e., existing Class B and C waters).

Clarification of the requirement to protect the state's shellfish resources.

Restructuring the Water Quality Standards:

A new format for the standards that clarifies the uses protected in water bodies and criteria to protect those uses. This format will accommodate customizing the standards in the future for specific water bodies where it makes sense to do so.

The issues dropped from the proposed changes included agricultural supply water criteria, dissolved oxygen criteria, and revised bacterial criteria for freshwaters systems. The new regulation along with all the supporting information can be found on Ecology's webpage at http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/wq/swqs

The following staff has been assigned to help answer any questions you may have on the water quality standards:

General issues:

Mark Hicks (360) 407-6477
mhic461@ecy.wa.gov

Antidegradation:

Andrew Kolosseus (360) 407-7543
akol461@ecy.wa.gov

Toxics:

Cheryl Niemi (360) 407-6440
cnie461@ecy.wa.gov