The decision came after the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality requested that the EQC increase the fish consumption rate from the current nation-wide average of 17.5 grams per day- about enough to fit on a cracker- by a factor of 10 to 175 grams per day.

“The Oregon Environmental Quality Commission’s decision reflects the importance of fish to many people in the state, both tribal and non-tribal,” said N. Kathryn Brigham, chair of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. “This decision protects the Oregonians most susceptible to water pollutants—the many tribal members who rely on salmon for their day-to-day sustenance.”

The action is a direct result of a 1988 government-to-government agreement between the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and CRITFC. As part of the agreement, CRITFC and its partners the Centers for Disease Control, the Indian Health Service, and the Oregon Health Sciences University, managed a 1994 fish consumption survey that demonstrated the tribes’ continued reliance on salmon and showed that over two-thirds of the tribal population consumed more salmon than the national average.

In conjunction with the consumption survey, the tribes collaborated with EPA in 1995 in an analysis of tissue from salmon, lamprey, sturgeon, sucker, and whitefish and found that every fish studied had some level of chemical contamination. Eggs of Chinook and coho salmon and steelhead were tainted with chemical residues.

“Fish made up about a third of the traditional tribal diet,” said Brigham. “The same chemical contaminants polluting the Columbia are found in the fish that we eat. Today’s decision recognizes that current water quality standards do not protect tribal members who eat more fish than the general population. It’s an important step in protecting the tribal population and the general public from dangerous levels of contamination.”

An important component of Oregon’s water quality standards is the amount of toxic pollutants humans may consume through the water they drink and in fish they eat. The consumption rate is designed to reflect how much fish people eat and is designed to protect human health from dangerous levels of toxic pollutants.

At today’s hearing, Jaime A. Pinkham spoke on CRITFC’s behalf telling the EQC that revising the consumption rate to 175 grams will demonstrate that “equitable environmental protection is a right of all citizens, not just the average ones” and respects the “patterns, customs and behaviors consistent with Oregon's demographics.”