ENVRIONMENT : Case of Letting the Neighborhood Go? : Washington State fumes over lax pollution controls just over the border in Canada.

Washington State posed a health alert this month against eating too many fish from behind the famous Grand Coulee Dam.

The reason: Dioxin contamination from upriver in British Columbia.

Politicians representing coastal Washington are fuming over spending millions of dollars to upgrade sewage treatment plants along Puget Sound.

The reason: The capitol of British Columbia, Victoria, is dumping its sewage into the cold blue waters of the sound untreated.

And, as if West Coast environmentalists are not busy enough at home, they are branching out with fresh cries of alarm.

The reason: Vast clear-cutting of timber in British Columbia, they fear, threatens to all but wipe out the world’s largest remaining temperate rain forest in just a matter of years.

These are uneasy times for old Northwest neighbors, Washington and British Columbia.

In recent weeks and days, the state Legislature, important members of Congress, state government officials and journalists from Washington State have waved accusatory fingers at British Columbia, just at a time when that provincial government has been weakened by turnover and charges of scandal.

“Something is very wrong here,” the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper said in an editorial.

In short, the charge from this side of the international border is that environmental laws in adjacent British Columbia are too lax. And further, that the consequences are spreading way beyond Canada, threatening human health and the Northwest’s natural wonders.

Most recently, the Washington Department of Health issued a disturbing warning about human consumption of fish in Lake Roosevelt, located in northeastern Washington where the famed Grand Coulee Dam spans the Columbia River.

Toxic dioxins and harmful furans were found in six species of fish studied in the lake, including rainbow trout, sturgeon, kokanee and walleye.

To reduce exposure to toxic chemicals, the state advised people to limit their intake of fish from the lake.

In a statement, the Health Department said “the only known industrial sources of these compounds” is a huge pulp mill along the Columbia River in Castlegar, B.C., about 35 miles north of the U.S.-Canada border.

For weeks, another storm has been brewing over Victoria’s discharge of millions of gallons of untreated sewage into Puget Sound.

The Washington Legislature, some leading members of the state’s congressional delegation and the Post-Intelligencer have called upon the provincial capital to build the same sewage treatment facilities required of U.S. cities along the sound.

“I do not mean to imply that we in the United States have not been shortsighted at times in our own environmental policies,” said Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) in a letter to the provincial government. “ . . . The difference, however, is that we have laws and recovery processes in place to limit further environmental decline in our state and nation, while the government of British Columbia appears to be taking little or no action. . . .”

The premier of British Columbia recently stepped down amid charges of conflict of interest in a real estate deal, and the beleaguered government is in the hands of an interim leader. Still, a spokesman for the Ministry of the Environment said the do-nothing charges are unfair.

“We don’t mind people pointing out we have problems. But we hope they also will point out that we have plans to clean them up. This cannot be done overnight,” said Jon O’Riordan, assistant deputy minister.

Generally, U.S. officials and Canadian environmentalists have ridiculed the pace of action.

The third front of the recent environmental attacks on British Columbia concerns clear-cutting of timber in the province. U.S. environmental leaders say they worry that as restrictions and limitations on cutting are imposed in the forests of Northern California, Oregon and Washington, greater pressure will come to bear on the remaining tracts of ancient timber to the north.

“We don’t have any laws up here to protect things like the spotted owl,” says Canadian Sierra Club leader Peter McAllister. “We are like Brazil--Brazil of the north.”

UNEASY BORDER

Washington state looks to British Columbia and sees spreading environmental problems:

* PUGET SOUND: Victoria is dumping raw sewage into the shared waters of the sound.

* COLUMBIA RIVER: Toxins from a Canadian mill contaminate fish in Washington.

* ANCIENT FORESTS: Pressures to log remaining temperate-zone rain forests are shifting to British Columbia.