Intended lawsuit over Puyallup River artificial turf pollution grows

Two local nonprofits have joined the Puyallup Tribe’s intended lawsuit against the owner of the Electron Dam.

Citizens for a Healthy Bay and Puget Soundkeeper Alliance have sent Bellingham-based Electron Hydro, LLC a notice of intent to sue in 60 days over pollution in the Puyallup River.

The Puyallup Tribe sent its notice earlier this month after the company put sheets of artificial turf, about 2,400 square yards in total, into the Puyallup River without a permit during a summer construction project at the dam. The sheets of turf came from a nearby disposal site where they had been sitting rolled up for years.

Once in the river, some pieces of the turf disintegrated, filling the river with coffee ground-sized pieces of crumb rubber that flowed downstream as far as the Puget Sound.

Puyallup Tribe concerned as Puyallup River fills with debris from construction site

“This is one of the most egregious pollution situations I have ever heard of … This dam as a whole is a fish-killing machine on its own,” said Melissa Malott, director of Citizens for a Healthy Bay. “And so we just knew this was a really big task, and we didn’t want to just let the tribe be standing on their own.”

Even before the tribe announced its intent to sue, Malott said she and her colleagues at Citizens for a Healthy Bay knew they wanted to take some type of legal action against Electron Hydro.

The Puyallup Tribe’s fisheries director, Russ Ladley, previously told KIRO Radio that he worries about the damage the pieces of rubber could be doing to the creatures that live in the Puyallup River.

“What is the effect on the food chain and the juvenile salmon, particularly those species that reside in the stream for varying amounts of time?” he asked, adding, “We’re going to have to work with other groups on doing testing at various life history stages and taking lab samples and finding out what it is they’re ingesting, and how might it be affecting them.

Ladley said scientists at the University of Washington are currently analyzing exactly that.

“Our understanding is that this artificial turf is made up from ground-up rubber tires,” Malott said. “If you burn a tire, it releases about a gallon of oil into the air. And so they have a lot of petrochemicals in them, so you can deduce that there is bad stuff in it.”

The effects of the pollution, she explained, could travel up the food chain to the endangered Southern Resident orcas, whose numbers have been declining in recent decades in part due to declining numbers of Chinook salmon, their main food source.

“Critically endangered salmon use that river to reproduce,” Malott said. “The spring Chinook salmon is incredibly valuable for the Puyallup Tribe, for the people who fish in our waters, for the orcas, and there are not a ton of waterways around here that they use to reproduce. So it’s devastating.”

Last month, Pierce County Executive Bruce Dammeier told KIRO Radio he wants to see the 116-year-old Electron Dam removed altogether and the river restored to its original run. Dammeier said this could help make up for some of the potential harm done to wildlife in the river.

“This was not a construction project that went wrong,” Dammeier said. “This was an operator that willfully decided to depart from the approved approach and use an unapproved, hazardous, polluting material, and put it in the river.”

Electron Hydro told KIRO Radio in a statement that the dam creates renewable energy for 20,000 homes.

“Electron provides critical non-thermal energy generation that supports other clean energy technologies by providing firm, reliable 24-hour energy when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow,” the statement read.

Electron further stated that it has been working on cleaning up the site.

“The recent industrial accident resulting in the discharge of synthetic materials to the river during construction of the new intake spillway is of grave concern to Electron,” the company stated. 

However, Malott said that there are still sheets of artificial turf remaining at the site. The plaintiffs are giving Electron Hydro 60 days to work to resolve the issue before suit is filed.

“We would like to see the ongoing pollution stop … we want to see the pollution cleaned up,” Malott said. “We want to see this company held accountable.”

Follow @NicoleKIROFM