The State of Washington Department of Ecology, as pointed out by my local Seattle bloggers at Sound Politics is in deep doo-doo. This department is charged with environmental enforcement in the Evergreen State. Their job is to track down those nasty corporate polluters, carbon spewers, and other nefarious exploiters of the environment and bring them to justice. It appears they have been hot on the trail of someone who was dumping something into a pristine creek in southern Washington. After aggressive pursuit for 13 years they finally met the enemy: their local Department of Ecology field office in Vancouver, WA. From the Seattle Times we read:
Thirteen years after Washington state’s environmental agency found a creek severely polluted, the contamination has been traced back to the agency’s regional office.
City workers discovered this week that a sewer line from the building housing the regional offices of the state Department of Ecology … was mistakenly connected to a storm water runoff system, rather than a municipal sewer main.
As a result, sewage from the building has been entering Burnt Bridge Creek and eventually Vancouver Lake for an unknown number of years.
Workers in the leased offices were stunned when they got the word Wednesday, The Columbian newspaper reported.
“As a person who loves her area and the environment, it was like, ‘Holy crap, let’s get this taken care of,'” said Laura Sauermilch, a spill response specialist.
Holy Crap indeed.
