This guest Slog post is by BJ Cummings, Coordinator of the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition, EPA’s Community Advisory Group for the river cleanup.

Federal officials recently released plans for cleaning up Seattle’s polluted Duwamish River. While their intent is good, the plan still isn’t good enough to clean the river.

The Environmental Protection Agency in 2001 listed Seattle’s Duwamish River—the five-mile long industrial waterway flowing between South Park and Boeing Field—as one of the nation’s most polluted hazardous waste sites. The results of a 2008 EPA investigation show that mud at the bottom of the river is tainted with PCBs (a banned carcinogen), dioxins (a key ingredient in Agent Orange), cPAHs, arsenic, and 38 other pollutants exceeding safe levels for the environment and human health. The toxins kill micro-bugs that live in the water, causing a chain reaction upward through the food chain to people, increasing risk of cancer, immune system breakdowns, and reproductive disorders. The chemicals particularly threaten the health of the river’s fishermen.

The EPA is now circulating a “menu” of options for the river’s cleanup. In short, those options include removing contaminated mud (dredging), covering the worst contamination with clean material (capping), or letting the river’s natural sedimentation upriver slowly bury the pollution in place (about 12,000 dump trucks of upriver sediment settle out in the river each year).

But the problem with all of these plans is this: The upriver sediment they would leave in place—which would eventually flow down river—isn’t clean either. Unless we do this right the first time, all that toxic stuff upriver will end up downriver.

A solution to the river's ills after the jump.

Upriver pollution accounts for as much as 95 percent of toxins flowing into the river today. So while current plans would deliver a river 70—90 percent cleaner than it is today, EPA documents say, that still wouldn't get the river clean enough to fish in. But after investing up to $1.3 billion to get that far, we need to protect our investment by making sure our cleaned up river isn’t covered over with polluted mud from upriver.

There’s another problem: The public-comment period is only asking for feedback about the options on the table. So at EPA’s public meetings in December, they won't be looking at options that would truly clean up the Duwamish River.

Here's the Solution: The Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition (DRCC), the EPA’s Community Advisory Group for the cleanup, is organizing the Duwamish communities—its residents, recreational users, businesses, and fishermen—to respond to EPA’s limited options. DRCC is hosting a series of public workshops in November (there’s one more coming up tonight) to help the community develop a new approach that includes the missing ingredient—controlling the ongoing sources of pollution from upriver. These new plans will then be presented to EPA at their December public meetings where they will be asking for public comment.

Tonight's meeting runs from 5:30-7:00 p.m. at Coliman Restaurant in Georgetown: 6932 Carleton Ave S @E. Marginal Way S.