Water Quality

Advocates for the West represents Idaho Conservation League (ICL) in this lawsuit against EPA for failing to timely approve or disapprove important water quality standards in Idaho.

In 2006, Idaho adopted a new fish consumption rate, which estimates the amount of fish people catch and eat from Idaho’s lakes and rivers.  Idaho uses the fish consumption rate to develop water quality standards and set limits on toxic pollution that may be discharged to Idaho’s waterbodies.  These limits aim to protect people from exposure to toxins from eating fish.

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Complaint (Jan 3, 2012)

Advocates for the West is working with concerned individuals and conservation groups to oppose plans by Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, and other Big Oil companies to create a high-and-wide industrial corridor for massive equipment to be transported from overseas shippers up Idaho's Clearwater and Lochsa Rivers over the Lolo Pass into Montana, and on to the Alberta tar sands fields.

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ITD lawsuit

Our Idaho Supreme Court brief

Overview of Idaho Opposition to Megaloads

Post Hearing Brief

Representing Idaho Conservation League, we successfully used the public trust doctrine to block the proposed Auger Falls dams on the mid-Snake River near the city of Twin Falls.  After federal agencies had issued permits for the dam, the Idaho State Land Board voted -- after a public hearing which voiced strong opposition to another dam on the mid-Snake -- to deny a submerged lands easement.  That ruling was upheld in state district court.

On behalf of Idaho Conservation League, we sent EPA a notice-of-intent letter in July 2008, alleging that it was violating Section 303(c) of the Federal Clean Water Act in not requiring the State of Idaho to adopt sufficiently protective water quality standards for arsenic and other toxic pollutants.

We thereafter negotiated a settlement agremeent with EPA and the Department of Justice, which establishes a schedule and process for EPA to address the outstanding arsenic and other toxic standards in Idaho.

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Arsenic WQS settlement

We won an injunction in 2004 preventing the Clearwater National Forest from proceeding with two adjoining timber sales in the Lolo Creek watershed of central Idaho, to protect habitat of imperilled fish -- including salmon, steelhead, and bull trout. 

Even though the Forest Service developed the two sales -- called "White/White" and "Brick/Trout" -- at the same time and they would affect the same watershed, it refused to analyze their cumulative impacts.  After we won the injunction, the agency agreed to withdraw the sales. 

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Lolo injunction

Representing a broad coalition of national, state and local conservation groups, we brought this case in 1997 to stop Forest Service plans to log old growth forests in the Clearwater region of central Idaho -- including the headwaters of the Lochsa and North Fork Clearwater rivers.   The case focused on how logging and logging roads greatly increase landslide risks in the fragile soils of the area; and on the Forest service's over-logging of old growth habitat.