Water rules could place Natives at higher cancer risk

BOISE, Idaho (AP) – An Idaho legislative panel has approved new water quality standards tied to fish consumption rates, which critics argue places the state’s Native American residents at a higher risk of cancer than their non-Indian counterparts.

Officials with the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality presented the proposed rule change to the Senate Resources and Environmental Committee on Tuesday. The committee passed the rules on a voice vote with only Senate Minority Leader Michelle Stennett, D-Ketchum, opposed.

The updated standards stem from a directive from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. If disapproved by the federal agency, the EPA will create its own standards for the state before the expiration of the directive.

Coming up with the rules has required a lengthy three-year process that attracted a wide range of feedback with very little consensus between Idaho’s five tribes, environmentalists and industry representatives. In that time, both the state and EPA conducted in-depth studies on fish consumption to have better information on how much fish people eat in Idaho.

Based on the surveys, the Department of Environmental Quality concluded that Idahoans eat 66.5 grams of fish per day, or about 4.7 ounces every other day. The former standard stood at 17.5 grams per day.

The water-quality standards were based on the level of cancer-causing toxins in the average amount of fish consumed by members of the Nez Perce Tribe. Critics say that will protect the vast majority of Idaho’s white residents, who typically eat less fish, but will put the tribal members who consume more than the average amount at risk.

“Often times, people will want risk to be the same for everybody, but we aren’t all the same,” DEQ Water Quality Division Administrator Barry Burnell said. “So I think that you have to understand that risk is individual-specific, and when we look at it from the general population.”

“The rule is intentionally designed to protect Idaho’s 90 percent white population,” said Justin Hayes, program director for the Idaho Conservation League. “This is a policy question: Is the state going to adopt rules that are very different for the dominant white population?”

Under federal law, bodies of water must be clean enough so people can safely eat fish from those waters.

“I guess the thing that mystifies me the most is that the quality of water is determined by how much fish we consume,” Stennett said. “There are so many more factors than fish, but here we are.”

At the beginning of each legislative session, Idaho lawmakers review a breadth of rules by executive branch agencies. Rule reviews can vary from the mundane to controversial, such as setting public school education standards, banning same-sex couples from filing joint state income tax, and limiting free speech rights of protesters at the Capitol. Rules carry the same force as a law because they are used to implement state statutes.