Agencies at Odds Over Dioxin Risk in Bay Health

[Neil Tangri <ntangri@essential.org>]

http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/SCIENCE/ENVIRON/topstory.html

Monday, August 23, 1999

  Agencies at Odds Over Dioxin Risk in Bay Health: Citing threat to San
Francisco anglers, EPA adds the pollutant to list of contaminants. State

says move will mean costly and unnecessary monitoring.
 By MARY CURTIUS, Times Staff Writer

SAN FRANCISCO--Earl Cousart has been pier-fishing in San Francisco Bay
at least twice a week since 1980, reeling in salmon, striped bass and
halibut with his buddies year-round. What he catches, Cousart says, he
eats. He loves to chop the salmon into a fish stew or fry up the bass.

"But I eat only the migratory fish," Cousart says. "The others, the ones

who live in the bay, they're contaminated."

Not far from where Cousart and nearly two dozen other anglers are
fishing on a foggy San Francisco morning, signs posted in a half-dozen
languages issue a stern warning: "No one should eat more than four meals

per month of any striped bass from San Francisco Bay. Women who are
pregnant or may soon become pregnant, nursing mothers and children under

age six should not eat fish from the area."

Despite the warnings, environmental activists say, hundreds of anglers
like Cousart try their luck in the choppy waters every day, and many of
them eat striped bass and other heavily contaminated fish several times
a week.

With that stubborn determination to eat bay fish in mind, the
Environmental Protection Agency this year took the unusual step of
overruling state and regional water quality boards and expanding the
list of pollutants impairing the water quality of the bay. EPA's Region
9 added dioxins and related compounds to a list that already contained
mercury and other contaminants.

Dioxins are highly toxic byproducts of chlorine-based industrial
processes and combustion. They are thought to be carcinogenic and to
pose other health risks. Dioxins are emitted into the air through
combustion in diesel engines, incinerators, refineries and wood-burning
fireplaces. There is ongoing scientific debate about which of these
produces the most dioxin. But all agree that trace amounts fall into the

bay or flow there in rivers or storm runoff.

By listing them, the EPA served notice to the state that it must conduct

a study of exactly who is producing dioxin, how it is getting into the
bay and how to reduce its levels.

Specifically citing the threat that dioxin in fish poses to anglers, the

EPA told the state it should make monitoring and reducing dioxin levels
"a very high priority."

The EPA's action reignited a debate here between regulators and
environmentalists that has occurred across the nation for nearly two
decades over just how much of a threat dioxin poses and exactly what can

be done about it.

The federal agency's action delighted Bay Area environmentalists.
Environmental groups here have for years argued that dioxins pose a
serious threat to bay anglers. They have pushed--largely
unsuccessfully--for dioxin monitoring and testing, claiming that local
oil refineries are largely responsible for dioxin emissions in the Bay
Area.

The EPA's listing of dioxin "is an important decision for environmental
justice reasons and practical reasons,"  said Greg Karras, a scientist
with Communities for a Better Environment, a Bay Area environmental
group that is lobbying to eliminate dioxin from industrial processes.
"This is the first time that the EPA declared the bay a high priority
for toxic cleanup action specifically to protect subsistence anglers."

But state agencies fear the prohibitive cost and technical difficulty of

monitoring dioxin levels and reducing dioxin flows. They also believe
the dioxin issue has been overblown by environmentalists.

"You would have to measure an awful lot before you find anything," said
Teresa Lee, a spokeswoman for the Bay Area Air Quality Management
District. Her agency has estimated that only 2.4 grams--roughly two
teaspoons--of dioxin are entering the Bay Area's atmosphere annually,
Lee said.

"A monitoring network for dioxin in the Bay Area would cost about a
quarter of a million dollars annually to maintain," Lee said.

The air quality board dismisses environmentalists' claims that
refineries and other industries are largely responsible for dioxin
emissions. The board estimates that 80% of the dioxin produced in the
Bay Area annually comes from emissions from diesel engines and
wood-burning fireplaces--a figure disputed by both environmentalists and

the EPA.

"If you wanted to stop dioxin production, you would have to retrofit
diesel engines, get people to stop burning wood. It would be a fairly
radical change in lifestyles for  individuals and incredibly radical for

the economy if you want to get rid of diesel engines," Lee said.

Wil Bruhns, senior engineer at the San Francisco Bay Regional Water
Quality Control Board, said his board is stymied by the EPA's ruling.
The EPA seems to expect the water quality control board to do something
about dioxins, Bruhns said, but the board can control only discharges
into the bay, not air emissions.

"The air people say their legal mandate is to make the air clean,"
Bruhns said. "They have standards and say there is not a problem with
dioxin in the air. It isn't a problem until people eat the fish, which
has nothing to do with dioxin in the air."

EPA Regional Administrator Felicia Marcus said she is frustrated by the
reaction of state agencies to the EPA ruling.

"Our challenge as leaders at EPA and the state is to  pull everybody
together and start with the problem and work backward to a solution,
rather than point fingers at each other," Marcus said. "This is an issue

of tremendous concern, and we're setting it as a very high
priority for state regulators to do the study to evaluate the risk and
to do the regulations that are needed."

The state began listing San Francisco Bay as a pollutant-impaired water
body in 1992. Under the federal Clean Water Act, after the EPA
identifies the pollutants that are damaging water quality, state and
federal agencies are required to develop studies for each compound and
come up with ways to reduce their presence to safe levels.

Marcus said the EPA does not agree with state officials that the primary

producers of dioxin are diesel engines and fireplaces.

"Dioxin comes from a lot of places," she said. "We don't know where it
is coming from. We don't know enough now, but we have to put our heads
together and come up with a plan."

Environmentalists say they are determined to continue pressuring
regional water and air quality boards to do something.

"We're certainly going to keep trying to push them to do more to
eliminate dioxin," said Michael Lozeau, director of San Francisco
BayKeeper, a nonprofit organization that monitors pollution in the bay.

"No one says it is going to be easy to monitor and eliminate dioxin,"
Lozeau said, "but how much is a life worth? If a few million dollars
will get rid of one of the most toxic, carcinogenic pollutants known to
humankind, then let's spend it. We can't start having our    agencies
spending all their time talking about what other agencies should be
doing."

But Lee, the water board spokeswoman, said the chances of entirely
eliminating dioxin from the bay are slim, because much of the dioxin now

found in the water and sediment has been there for decades.

"This is such an incredibly stable compound that even if you stopped
existing dioxin production, you would still have a dioxin problem in the

bay," Lee said.

Far from the bureaucratic wrangling about dioxin and poisoned fish,
Cousart watched with satisfaction as one  of his friends gutted a
10-pound salmon Cousart had landed. Tonight, the angler said, it would
be fish stew for dinner.

"If I didn't have to work," he said, happy with his catch, "I'd be out
here every day."

Copyright 1999 Los Angeles Times. All Rights Reserved


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Neil TANGRI