Suquamish Tribe intends to sue King County over wastewater spills
Jul 27, 2020, 5:04 PM
The West Point Treatment Plant neighbors Seattle's Discovery Park near the Magnolia neighborhood. (King County)
(King County)
The Suquamish Tribe has filed a notice of intent to sue King County for discharging wastewater into Puget Sound.
This comes after repeated spills at the West Point Treatment Plant at Discovery Park over the past couple of years.
“The Tribal Council felt they had to take action in order to bring attention to the frequency of the spills so that we could try to go toward a solution,” said Suquamish Tribal Chairman Leonard Forsman.
King County “is responsible for at least 11 significant illegal discharges of untreated sewage from the West Point Treatment plant into the Tribe’s treaty-protected fishing areas, with individual discharge events ranging from 50,000 gallons to 2.1 million gallons,” states a press release from the tribe.
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The letter, which was sent last week, gives the county two months to come to a compromise with the tribe out of court. Otherwise, a lawsuit will be the result.
“Taking legal action is always a last resort, but we felt that this time, we needed to bring attention to this issue,” Forsman said.
Forsman said fecal matter spills of any size can be very harmful to the Puget Sound’s marine life — and that, in turn, harms tribal members.
“A lot of our people depend on these fisheries for their income, and also for our traditional ceremonies,” Forsman said. “It’s not just an aesthetic or a recreational asset, it’s also a food source.”
He noted that King County Executive Dow Constantine, the King County Council, and other county leaders have always shown a passion for nature preservation, and he said he is confident they can work together to find solutions to this issue so that it stops being a common occurrence.
“It’s serious business, and that’s really what I think our suit is saying — that we can’t just do an, ‘Oh well,’ on these, we’ve got to reduce these,” Forsman said.
King County issued the following statement in response:
We share the Suquamish Tribe’s unyielding commitment to protecting the water quality of Puget Sound and our regional waters. We value our government-to-government relationship with the Suquamish Tribe, respect and defend tribal treaty rights, and look forward to sitting down together to discuss their concerns. When any event causes a water quality violation, it is diligently reported to the state Department of Ecology, which is responsible for administering and enforcing NPDES permits. King County has made major improvements to wastewater treatment facilities and operations over the last serval [sic] years, and is investing an additional $9 billion this decade alone in clean water and healthy habitat. Our devotion to continuous improvement compels us to always do better for fish, wildlife, and all those who call this region home.
