The administration activity supports agency functions by providing leadership, cross-program support, and staff presence throughout the state. Administration manages the agency's long-term financial health and provides information to support sound decision-making and resource management by managers. Communication, education, and outreach tools play a major role in protecting and improving the environment. Administration staff serve as liaisons to Congress, the state Legislature, local governments, businesses, Indian tribes, and environmental and citizen groups. Administration helps managers and employees create a safe, supportive, and diverse work environment by providing comprehensive human resource services. It also oversees information management (desktop and network services, application development, and data administration) and facility and vehicle management; maintains the agency’s centralized records and library resources; responds to public records requests; and provides mail services.

Ecology staff seeks to meet increasing water demands from population growth, while protecting limited instream resources and adapting to climate change. Actions include: • Instream flow rules - Work with local stakeholders to implement and update, as needed, instream flow rules for fish and wildlife, recreation, and other instream resources. Evaluate regions of the state that are experiencing conflict over water, as potential areas for adjudication. • Streamflow Restoration - Work with watershed groups to establish or revise a streamflow restoration plan to mitigate the impacts of new domestic water use. • Section 401 federal licensing of dams - Collaborate with local governments, tribes, and other stakeholders to develop permit conditions for hydropower facilities that ensure minimum instream flows are met and that stream flows are adjusted to adapt to water supply conditions during the 50 year license period. • Water acquisition - Acquire senior water rights to restore and protect stream flows. Review municipal and industrial reclaimed water projects and water system plans to ensure new uses of water do not impair senior rights. Monitor water supply conditions that may impact water rights and the environment, and respond when water supplies are impacted by drought.

Ecology protects public health and natural resources by cleaning up and managing contaminated upland sites and contaminated sediments in the aquatic environment. Resources are first focused on cleaning up contaminated sites that pose the greatest risk to public health and the environment. These include sites where contamination threatens drinking water, exists in a large quantity, is very toxic, may affect a waterbody or the environmental health of sediments, or may affect people that are living, working, or recreating near the site. Contamination may be in the soil, sediments, underground water, air, drinking water, or surface water. Ecology also manages multi agency upland and sediment cleanup projects. Cleaning up these sites protects public health, safeguards the environment, and promotes local economic development by making land available for new industries and other beneficial uses.

The federal Clean Water Act requires the agency to develop water quality standards and to identify water bodies that fail to meet those standards. The agency does this by reviewing thousands of water quality data samples and publishing an integrated water quality assessment report. This report lists the water bodies that do not meet standards. Ecology then works with local interests to prepare water quality improvement reports to reduce pollution, establish conditions in discharge permits and nonpoint source management plans, and monitor the effectiveness of the improvement report.

Ecology conducts pollution identification studies to address known or suspected problems at specific sites and across regional areas. These studies support our efforts under the federal Clean Water Act, as well as the state Water Pollution Control and Model Toxics Control Acts. Studies range from simple water quality sampling for bacteria or dissolved oxygen, to very complex projects assessing the amount of nutrients in large watersheds. Many projects support development of water quality improvement plans or Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDLs) to assess how much of a pollutant a waterbody can absorb without exceeding water quality standards.

Ecology prepares tools, provides assistance, and offers compliance strategies to control the quantity and quality of stormwater runoff from development and industrial activities. The agency currently provides training and assistance to communities and industries on stormwater manuals and the Western Washington hydrology model. Ecology works with local governments and other stakeholders to implement a municipal stormwater program and permitting system.

The Department of Ecology: • Provides technical assistance and outreach to promote waste reduction and recycling, including how to reduce contamination in the recycling stream. • Implements plastic and single-use packaging laws. • Supports recycling and reuse market development through the Recycling Development Center. • Reduces wasted food through a state food waste reduction and diversion plan and the Center for Sustainable Food Management. • Provides technical assistance to promote reuse of organic materials. • Ensures an environmentally compliant biosolids program in the state. • Promotes environmentally preferred purchasing. • Oversees producer managed recycling programs.

The Department of Ecology is the state's lead agency managing litter programs. We operate youth and adult litter pickup crews and provide funding for litter pickup and prevention to state and local governments. We work with partners across the state to promote litter prevention and secure vehicle loads for safer, cleaner highways and public areas.

This activity protects life, property, and the environment by overseeing the safety of Washington's dams. This includes inspecting the structural integrity and flood and earthquake safety of existing state dams not managed by the federal government; approving and inspecting new dam construction and repairs; and taking compliance and emergency actions.

Ecology accredits environmental laboratories that submit data to the agency and to the Department of Health. The accreditation program covers analyses in all typical environmental matrices (air, water, soil, sediment, tissue), and drinking water. Accreditation ensures environmental laboratories have the demonstrated capability to provide accurate and defensible data. Ecology’s laboratory accreditation program is the primary method of performance monitoring for over 400 laboratories in the accreditation program. Ecology will start accrediting cannabis laboratories in 2024. To prepare for this role, Ecology is leading the Cannabis Science Task Force to recommend lab quality standards for cannabis laboratories.

The Department of Ecology provides planning assistance to local governments and financial assistance to local governments, non-governmental organizations, and community groups through three grant programs: • Local Solid Waste Financial Assistance (LSWFA) grants to local governments for solid waste planning, implementation, and enforcement. • Public Participation Grants (PPG) to interest groups for public outreach and education. • Waste Reduction and Recycling Education (WRRED) grants to local governments and non profit organizations for public outreach and education.

The agency protects public health and natural resources by working to restore the public use of air, soil, and water at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation by cleaning up contaminated sites from past activities. Radioactive and hazardous contaminants are removed, residual contaminants are contained and monitored, and mitigation of natural resource damage on Hanford occurs.

The agency oversees the decommissioning of the large, complex, and high-risk facilities throughout the Hanford site and provides regulatory oversight of mixed waste management activities at facilities not under the management of the U.S. Department of Energy (Columbia Generating Station, Perma-Fix Northwest, and the U.S. Navy's Puget Sound Naval Shipyard).

The agency protects public health and natural resources by providing regulatory oversight for the treatment and removal of highly radioactive tank waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. This activity is focused on the design, permitting, construction, and operation of the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant, the Integrated Disposal Facility (a mixed, low-level waste landfill), and immobilized high-level waste storage facility.

The agency protects public health and the environment by enforcing regulatory compliance at the Hanford site to ensure the safe storage, treatment, and disposal of the high-level radioactive tank waste according to the Hanford Tank Waste Project.

The agency provides regulatory oversight for the safe storage, treatment, and disposal of liquid and solid dangerous and radioactive mixed wastes at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, as well as at radioactive mixed-waste sites throughout the state. This activity regulates the management of this historic and ongoing waste stream, and ensures the retrieval, treatment, and safe disposal of high-risk transuranic and high activity wastes currently buried in shallow, unlined trenches.

This activity supports the work the agency does to: Provide the public and local governments with information about the type, location, and source of hazardous substances in local communities. • Provide waste generators with best practices and other helpful information. • Collect, manage, and report hazardous waste generation data to meet EPA's data reporting and community right to know requirements. • Engage with various interested parties and communities to inform environmental justice and hazardous waste and toxics reduction efforts.

To ensure the reliability and integrity of data Ecology generates, agency staff: • Provide guidance and training on developing quality assurance project plans. • Review project proposals. • Consult on sampling design requirements and interpretation of results. This quality assurance work is required by the Environmental Protection Agency for entities (including Ecology) that receive funding for work involving environmental data. In addition, Ecology scientists, modelers, statisticians, chemists, and other specialists: • Interpret technical data. • Review grantee monitoring plans. • Supply information for policy decisions to support agency mandates.

This activity supports the work the agency does to: • Conduct dangerous waste compliance inspections, escalating to formal enforcement actions when necessary. • Amends the Dangerous Waste Regulations to keep our rules current with the federal program and maintain state authorization. • Provide dangerous waste management and pollution prevention education and technical assistance to businesses, including via local specialists through the Pollution Prevention Assistance partnership. • Issue permits to facilities that treat, store, or dispose of dangerous waste, and ensure that proper financial assurance requirements are in place.

Ecology currently regulates over 10,000 active tanks on over 3,600 different properties, including gas stations, industries, commercial properties, and governmental entities. We ensure tanks are installed, managed, and monitored according to federal standards and in a way that prevents releases into the environment. This is done through compliance inspections and providing technical assistance to tank owners and operators. Properly managing such tanks saves millions of dollars in cleanup costs and prevents contamination of limited drinking water and other groundwater resources.

The agency allocates surface and ground water to meet the state’s many water supply needs. Ecology staff makes decisions on applications for new water rights, changes to existing water rights, and by participating in water rights adjudications in areas where additional certainty is needed.

This activity supports the work the agency does to collect and monitor air quality and emissions data used to assess trends; assist compliance; and assess control strategies, health effects, and environmental damage from air pollution.

The Manchester Environmental Laboratory is a full service environmental laboratory. The lab provides technical, analytical, and sampling support for chemistry and microbiology for multiple Ecology programs, and supports work conducted under the federal Clean Water Act, as well as the state Water Pollution Control, Puget Sound Water Quality Protection, Children’s Safe Products and Model Toxics Control Acts.

Ecology operates a statewide environmental monitoring network to: • Assess the status of major waterbodies. • Identify threatened or impaired waters. • Evaluate changes and trends in water quality over time. This network includes sampling stations in rivers, streams, and marine waters (Puget Sound and the major coastal estuaries). Ecology measures statewide biological, chemical, and habitat conditions to provide information on the health of watersheds on a regional scale. Ecology also measures stream flows in salmon critical basins and key watersheds statewide.

The Department of Ecology provides a single point of contact for compliance reviews and technical assistance for petroleum refineries, pulp and paper mills, and aluminum smelters so they have consistent regulatory oversight.

This activity ensures large commercial vessels, oil handling facilities, and railroad operators that transport oil by rail maintain state-approved oil spill contingency plans so they can rapidly and effectively respond to major oil spills. State planning standards ensure response equipment and personnel are strategically staged throughout the state. This work is carried out through staff review and approval of contingency plans, drills that test contingency plans, development of geographic response plans, and maintenance of a regional contingency plan in partnership with other agencies.