A railroad company illegally buried protected wetlands in Washington State, and the EPA let them walk away with a fine smaller than the average American’s tax refund.

The Dump That Nobody Permitted

Starting in or around September 2023, Portland Vancouver Junction Railroad LLC sent heavy earthmoving equipment onto a parcel of land in Clark County, Washington, near the small community of Chelatchie. What those machines did next was a direct violation of federal law. They relocated and discharged dredged material and fill material, including organic soils, gravel, rocks, and wood chips, below the ordinary high-water mark of unnamed protected tributaries and into adjacent wetlands.

The railroad did not have a permit to do this. They did not apply for one. Under Section 301(a) of the Clean Water Act, every single discharge without a permit is its own separate federal violation. The EPA’s own document confirms this plainly and without ambiguity.

The waters the railroad filled are connected. Those unnamed tributaries flow into Chelatchie Creek. Chelatchie Creek connects to Cedar Creek. Cedar Creek feeds the Lewis River. The Lewis River is a traditional navigable water protected under the Clean Water Act. What the railroad buried in those wetlands does not stay there. It moves downstream.

No Permit. No Problem. Apparently.

The EPA’s own consent agreement describes this as a violation of CWA Section 301(a), the foundational prohibition against unpermitted pollutant discharge into navigable waters. The agency had full authority to pursue maximum penalties. Instead, it chose to assess $14,000 ($14,000, roughly the cost of four months of groceries for a family of four) against a company that operated heavy earthmoving equipment in federally protected waters without a single permit in place.

The railroad’s president, Eric Temple, signed the consent agreement. The company “neither admits nor denies” the specific factual allegations, a standard legal tactic that lets corporations pay their way out of accountability without ever being forced to say the words: we did this, and we knew it was wrong.

What $14,000 Cannot Buy Back

Wetlands are not decorative. They are infrastructure, built over thousands of years by biology and hydrology working together. They filter pollutants, slow floodwaters, recharge groundwater supplies, and provide the base of the food chain that sustains fish populations in rivers like the Lewis. When a railroad sends heavy equipment into a wetland and buries it under gravel, rocks, and wood chips, that infrastructure does not just pause. It dies.

The unnamed tributaries and their adjacent wetlands near Chelatchie sit at the headwaters of a chain that runs to the Lewis River. Headwater wetlands are among the most ecologically sensitive systems in the Pacific Northwest. They trap sediment, regulate water temperature, and provide spawning and rearing habitat for cold-water fish species that require clean, stable streambeds. When fill material is pushed below the ordinary high-water mark, it buries that streambed. Gravel beds that salmon and steelhead use to lay eggs become impacted, compacted, and sterile. The damage does not announce itself with a headline. It shows up years later in population counts and fish surveys.

The communities downstream, people who fish these waters, people who draw on these watersheds, people who rely on the flood-buffering function of intact wetlands, received no notice that this was happening. The EPA’s consent agreement confirms the discharge started in September 2023. The enforcement action was not filed until 2025. For nearly two years, those wetlands absorbed illegal fill while the regulatory machinery slowly turned. Nobody knocked on doors in Chelatchie or along the Lewis River to say: a railroad buried your watershed without asking anyone’s permission.

The settlement offers zero remediation. No restoration requirement appears in the consent agreement. No order to remove the fill material. No mandate to replant the wetland vegetation. No monitoring to track downstream impacts. Portland Vancouver Junction Railroad pays $14,000 (less than the annual cost of health insurance for a single adult) and walks away from a permanently altered landscape. The wetlands that took centuries to form will not recover on their own timetable because a fine was paid. The clean water the law promised to protect is not refunded with a check to the EPA’s Cincinnati Finance Center.

Straight From the Document: What the EPA Actually Said

The Real Price of Buried Wetlands

Environmental Degradation: A Connected Watershed Under Siege

The EPA document maps the ecological chain with precision. Unnamed tributaries connect to Chelatchie Creek. Chelatchie Creek connects to Cedar Creek. Cedar Creek connects to the Lewis River. This is a fully interconnected watershed, and the railroad drove heavy equipment into its headwaters. Fill material discharged below the ordinary high-water mark does not stay put. It migrates downstream with every rain event, every seasonal flood, every normal flow cycle.

The specific materials identified in the consent agreement, organic soils, gravel, rocks, and wood chips, represent a broad range of fill types. Wood chips and organic material in particular introduce biological oxygen demand into a waterway as they decompose, depleting dissolved oxygen and stressing aquatic species. Gravel and rock change the channel morphology, raising bed elevations and altering flow paths. The EPA’s own regulatory definition of “fill material” confirms that these substances change the bottom elevation of a water of the United States. Once the elevation changes, the hydrology changes. Once the hydrology changes, everything that depends on it changes too.

The wetlands adjacent to those tributaries served as a buffer, absorbing excess water, filtering sediment, and providing edge habitat for wildlife. The consent agreement confirms that fill material entered these wetlands directly. Buffer zones, once filled, stop functioning as buffers. The Clark County landscape near Chelatchie loses a piece of its natural flood and pollution management infrastructure every time a company like this gets away with a $14,000 fine.

Public Health: Downstream Communities Bear the Cost

The Lewis River is not a remote wilderness feature. It is a water resource for communities in southwestern Washington and is connected to regional water systems that people depend on for drinking water, irrigation, and recreation. Unpermitted fill in headwater wetlands introduces turbidity, alters sediment loads, and can carry contaminants into the broader watershed. The EPA’s consent agreement makes clear that these waters meet the legal definition of “navigable waters of the United States,” precisely because the public has a recognized stake in their integrity.

The consent agreement does not include any water quality testing, any health risk assessment, or any monitoring requirement. The $14,000 fine closes the enforcement file. It does not fund a single water quality test, a single fish survey, or a single study of downstream turbidity. The communities along Chelatchie Creek, Cedar Creek, and the Lewis River have no legal mechanism through this settlement to demand answers about what was discharged, in what quantities, or what the downstream effects will be over time.

Economic Inequality: Who Pays When Corporations Don’t

The Clean Water Act’s penalty structure exists for a reason. The law allows Class II civil penalties of up to $27,378 per day per violation, up to a maximum of $342,218 ($342,218, enough to fund a full-time environmental monitoring scientist for nearly five years). That ceiling was designed to make violations economically painful for corporations, to ensure that the cost of breaking the law exceeds the cost of following it. When the EPA settles for 4.1 cents on the dollar, it inverts that logic entirely.

A fine of $14,000 ($14,000, roughly what a minimum-wage worker in Washington earns in four months of full-time work) against a company operating commercial railroad infrastructure and heavy earthmoving equipment in the Pacific Northwest is a rounding error. It is not a deterrent. It is a cost of doing business, predictable and manageable, to be absorbed like any other operating expense. The communities whose water, wildlife, and watershed were degraded will absorb the real costs over decades. They will not receive a check from the EPA’s Cincinnati Finance Center.

Run the Numbers Yourself

Who’s Accountable. Where to Push. What to Do.

The Person Who Signed

Eric Temple, President of Portland Vancouver Junction Railroad LLC, signed this consent agreement on behalf of the company. He is the accountable executive of record in this enforcement action.

The Agency That Let Them Off

The enforcement action was brought and settled by EPA Region 10, the regional office covering the Pacific Northwest, based in Seattle, Washington. The Director of the Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division signed the agreement on behalf of the EPA.

The Watchlist: Regulatory Bodies With Jurisdiction

• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 10 (Seattle) — Clean Water Act enforcement authority
• U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — Section 404 permit authority for fill material in navigable waters
• Washington State Department of Ecology — State-level water quality and wetland protection
• Clark County, Washington — Local land use and environmental compliance oversight
• U.S. Department of Justice — Civil enforcement backstop if fines are not paid

What You Can Do Right Now

Contact EPA Region 10 directly and demand to know why the penalty was set at 4.1% of the allowable maximum. Contact the Washington State Department of Ecology and ask whether state-level restoration requirements will be pursued. Find your local watershed council, river stewardship organization, or tribal environmental office and connect with the people already fighting for these waters. The Lewis River watershed has advocates. They need voices, bodies, and attention, not just outrage on a screen.