Cook Inlet fisheries deserve more protection

As the salmon return to Cook Inlet, it’s time to take notice of the incredible bounty that supports our families, our businesses and our way of life. I’ve fished in Cook Inlet my entire life, and I never fail to appreciate the benefits that fresh, wild Cook Inlet salmon and halibut bring to me and my family. I need look no further than the recent salmon fishery closures in the Pacific Northwest to know how good we have it in Cook Inlet and elsewhere around Alaska.

But as we head out for our commercial, sport or subsistence harvests, it’s also time to remember a less fortunate fact: Cook Inlet remains the only coastal waterbody in the nation where the oil and gas industry legally dumps billions of gallons of toxic drilling and production wastes each year. These waste streams contain a broad array of toxic and other pollutants, including oil and grease, and toxic metals such as lead, cadmium and arsenic — the very same pollutants an EPA subsistence foods study found in fish and shellfish around Tyonek, Nanwalek and Seldovia. Equally disturbing, these toxic pollutants taint our efforts to brand and market Cook Inlet salmon as clean, healthy and wholesome — an essential component in our fight for market share against a glut of farmed fish on world markets.

Several of the platforms and facilities in Cook Inlet pre-date the 1972 Clean Water Act, and despite congressional efforts to rein-in industry pollution discharges, the antiquated practice of dumping drilling and production wastes has persisted in Cook Inlet. Yet the technology exists to properly dispose of these wastes — by reinjecting them back into the formation. In fact, for all of the Cook Inlet platforms, roughly 95 percent of the waste dumped each year comes from one facility — the Trading Bay Production Facility on the West side of Cook Inlet — and an injection well there would go a long way toward solving the problem.

Yet in the latest permit proceeding, Chevron steadfastly refused to stop the dumping, and proposed instead to install a diffuser on the Trading Bay discharge pipe. Instead of properly treating these toxic wastes through re-injection, Chevron’s proposal will simply spread them around. However, many of the pollutants persist in the environment, and can accumulate in the fish we eat, so dispersing them makes little sense in the long term.

Furthermore, because industry also wanted to nearly triple the volume of pollutants discharged into Cook Inlet each year, our government agencies — the Environmental Protection Agency and the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation — approved a permit with massive “mixing zones” to help industry elude the end-of-pipe discharge limits imposed elsewhere,

I understand why industry continues to dump into our prized salmon fisheries. Proper waste treatment — in this case, waste reinjection — costs money, and investments in treatment might mean less profit for the corporations. But using our public waterbodies and fisheries as dumping grounds equates to a huge subsidy for industry at a time when corporate profits are skyrocketing with high fuel prices. For example, Chevron is the largest operator in Cook Inlet, and it raked in profits of more than $5 billion in just the first three months of 2008, so it’s increasingly difficult for Chevron officials to argue that cost is a substantial hurdle to proper treatment.

I use oil and gas products every day, and the industry plays a vital role in our economy. I also live and work with friends in the oil and gas industry, and I know they want to do the right thing. But the decision to dump toxic wastes in Cook Inlet fisheries comes from the corporate lawyers and accountants in California and Texas, who see no value to their bottom line in protecting Cook Inlet.

When every Alaskan is feeling the pain at the pump, it seems that Chevron and the other Cook Inlet operators should do the right thing and start treating our Cook Inlet fisheries – and the people and families who rely on them – with some respect.

Rob Ernst is president of Cook Inletkeeper (www.inletkeeper.org), a community-based organization dedicated to protecting the Cook Inlet watershed and the life it sustains. He is a commercial fishermen/processor who lives in Kenai.