The April 8 CVN “This Week in History” section included a story from 1996, when Coeur Alaska withdrew its state-of-the-art treatment plan for contaminated wastewater at the Kensington project because members of the public demonstrated it would lead to violations of state water quality standards and the federal Clean Water Act. Soon after, the Bush administration devised a work-around: they redefined the word “fill” to include toxic mine tailings to make it legal for the mine to dam and fill a natural, fish-bearing lake with mine waste. Fast-forward 25 years to the back-page story in last week’s paper about DOWA/Constantine’s withdrawal of its state-of-the-art wastewater treatment plan. Two years ago, members of the public clearly and correctly asserted, according to a 2018 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision and a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision, that DOWA/Constantine’s treatment design and DEC’s discharge permit based on that design would lead to a violation of State water quality standards and the federal Clean Water Act. Last August DOWA/Constantine withdrew their design and said it will resubmit a new plan at some point in the future. Will our “watchdog” regulators change the ground rules again? Both cases unfortunately required members of the public to challenge the treatment design plans of the would-be dischargers and the permitting decisions of the regulating agencies before they ran afoul of the law, and common sense. Why must so many proposals to pollute public waters be carefully scrutinized and are often challenged? Because history keeps repeating itself.
Gershon Cohen