Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/358511
ByNigelDuara The Associated Press PORTLAND, ORE. For the first time in its history, the U.S. Army Corps of Engi- neers will have to disclose the amount of pollutants its dams are sending into waterways in a ground- breaking legal settlement that could have broad im- plications for the Corps' hundreds of dams nation- wide. The Corps announced in a settlement on Monday that it will immediately no- tify the conservation group that filed the lawsuit of any oil spills among its eight dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers in Oregon and Washington. The Corps will also ap- ply to the Environmental Protection Agency for pol- lution permits, something the Corps has never done for the dams on the Colum- bia and Snake rivers. The settlement filed in U.S. District Court in Port- land, Oregon, ends the year- old consolidated lawsuit by the conservation group Co- lumbia Riverkeeper, which said the Corps violated the Clean Water Act by unmon- itored, unpermitted oil dis- charges from the eight hy- droelectric dams. The settlement reflects the recent tack of the EPA regulating the environ- mental impacts of energy. The agency has recently come up with regulations of mountaintop removal for coal and fracking for oil and gas. As part of the settle- ment, the Corps admits no wrongdoing, but will pay $143,000 and the con- solidated cases were dis- missed. When contacted by The Associated Press, the Corps' Northwest and na- tional offices requested questions via email Mon- day and did not immedi- ately comment on the set- tlement. The settlement will al- low oversight of the dams by the EPA. The agency had the authority to regu- late the dams' pollution be- fore the settlement, but it could not compel the corps to file for a pollution per- mit. The Corps will also be forced to switch to a bio- degradable lubricant for its dam machinery if an inter- nal study finds that it's fi- nancially feasible. The Corps isn't just a polluter, however. It's also a regulator of pollution un- der the Clean Water Act. The act grants the Corps the authority to issue per- mits for the discharge of materials excavated from or put into U.S. waterways. "Under the letter of the law, they have been en- gaged in unpermitted dis- charge for years," said Me- lissa Powers, an environ- mental law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon. "They should have long ago said, 'This is how much we're discharging. Here are the environmental im- pacts.' " Monday's settlement will force the Corps' hand. To discharge pollutants into waterways, the pol- luters must obtain permis- sion from state and federal governments. Before the settlement, the EPA knew about the unpermitted dis- charges from the dams, but the Corps said in letters to state agencies that it is not accountable to the EPA. The Corps argued in the same letters that disclosing the mechanical workings of the dam as part of an oil- discharge summary could compromise the dams' se- curity. In July 2013, Columbia Riverkeeper sued and de- manded to know what the Corps was sending into the water and how much of it was going in. "When you're not regu- lated under a permit, you don't have to say what the impact (of pollution) on wa- ter was," Powers said. Nationally, the settle- ment could force all unper- mitted dams to obtain Na- tional Pollutant Discharge Elimination System per- mits from the EPA. Daniel Estrin, an envi- ronmental law professor at Pace Law School in White Plains, New York, said the settlement will make it im- possible for the Corps to say that all of its pollutant- discharging dams don't re- quire discharge permits. "The Corps' acknowl- edgement of the need for permits in this settlement will make it difficult for other owners to success- fully deny that permits are required in the face of citizen suits like the one brought (here)," Es- trin said. The eight dams affected by the settlement are the Bonneville, the John Day, The Dalles and McNary in Oregon and the Ice Har- bor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose and Lower Granite in Washington state. WATER Co rp s ag re es t o mo ni to r da m po ll ut io n JACKIEJOHNSTON—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS The Ice Harbor dam on the Snake River in Pasco, Wash., is seen in 2006. By Alicia A. Caldwell The Associated Press WASHINGTON The gov- ernment said Monday it will soon close three emergency shelters it es- tablished at U.S. mil- itary bases to tempo- rarily house children caught crossing the Mex- ican border alone. It said fewer children were being caught and other shelters will be adequate. A shelter in Oklahoma at Fort Sill is expected to close as early as Fri- day, the Health and Hu- man Services Department said. Shelters in Texas at Joint Base San Antonio- Lackland and in Califor- nia at Naval Base Ventura County-Port Hueneme will wrap up operations in the next two to eight weeks, agency spokesman Ken- neth Wolfe said. About 7,700 children had been housed at the three mil- itary bases since shelters there opened in May and early June. They stayed an average of 35 days. Since Oct. 1 more than 57,000 unaccompanied children, mostly from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, have been caught crossing the Mexi- can border illegally. A 2008 law requires that unaccompanied child immigrants from coun- tries that don't border the United States be handed over to the Health and Human Services Depart- ment within 72 hours of being apprehended. The children are cared for by the government un- til they can be reunited with a relative or another sponsor in the United States while they await a deportation hearing in immigration court. The crush of Central American children caught at the border in recent months has strained re- sources across the govern- ment and prompted Pres- ident Barack Obama to ask Congress to approve an emergency $3.7 billion spending bill to deal with what he described as a hu- manitarian crisis. Mem- bers of the House of Rep- resentatives left town for the August recess without acting on the request. Last month the Home- land Security Department reported that the number of child immigrants cross- ing the border alone had started to decline, from as many as 2,000 each week in June to about 500 each week in mid-July. Admin- istration officials said at the time that multiple fac- tors likely contributed to the decline. The number of people caught crossing the bor- der illegally typically de- clines during the hottest summer months. Administration offi- cials have said as many 90,000 child immigrants could cross the border by the end of the budget year in September. The military base shel- ters could reopen if the number of young bor- der crossers spikes again in the near future, Wolfe said. Feds closing emergency child migrant shelters ERIC GAY — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS A temporary shelter for unaccompanied minors who have entered the country illegally is seen at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio on June 23. 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