Residents vexed by groundwater pollution west of Spokane

The Associated Press

SPOKANE - Deep Creek area residents have pressed government officials
to step up the effort to determine the source of groundwater pollution
around two Cold War-era missile sites.
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In a forum with state and federal health and environmental officials
Thursday night at the Deep Creek Grange, Rick Williams, whose well
tested at 15 times the "maximum contaminant level" for the toxic
solvent trichloroethylene, or TCE, said historical studies are
"unacceptable."

He was referring to an abridged Environmental Protection Agency
report, released Wednesday, which covered interviews with former Air
Force personnel and longtime area residents, a brief review of
military archives and inquiries with Spokane County officials.

Fairchild Defense Nike Battery 87, two surface-to-air missile sites
four miles apart just north of U.S. Highway 2 and west of Deep Creek,
was decommissioned in the early 1960s. TCE, widely used as a degreaser
in missile operations, was detected in a nearby well in October 2004.

Since then EPA investigators have found the solvent in six private
wells and four monitoring wells in a study area around two sites. Low
levels of perchlorate, a salt used in rocket fuel, have been detected
in 60 private wells and four monitoring wells, and
N-nitrosodimethylamine, or NDMA, a rocket fuel igniter, was found in
33 private wells.

EPA officials have written that none of the contamination found to
date constitutes an immediate health threat to area residents,
including a number of Hutterite farmers whose Anabaptist religious
traditions are similar to those of the Mennonites and have a communal
lifestyle.

Williams said his wife Sally learned of the contamination while
undergoing chemotherapy for cancer.

"We have to rely on EPA or the Army Corps (of Engineers) to
investigate this," Williams said. "They need to be held accountable."

EPA District 10 spokesman Tony Brown said the agency is not done and
is still "doing everything it can to find the source of the
contamination," adding that residents have been kept informed "every
step of the way."

"We can't speak for the Corps of Engineers," Brown said.

Impatience with the pace of the effort also was expressed at the forum
by Kristina Savestinas, an aide to Rep. Cathy McMorris, R-Wash., who
cited a letter from the congresswoman to Dave Roden at the corps'
office in Seattle on Sept. 7.

McMorris wrote that because of EPA findings indicating the missile
sites might be the source of pollution, "it is vitally important to
get to the bottom of this issue so the land owners in the area have
the answers they deserve."

McMorris has yet to receive a reply, and "a week is sufficient time,"
Savestinas said.

The corps, responsible for cleaning up former military sites, has
determined there is insufficient evidence to pinpoint the source of
the pollution. Corps officials have noted that TCE was commonly used
as a degreaser in civilian as well as military operations the 1950s
and '60s assert that the other two chemicals also could have come from
other sources.

According to a report by an EPA contractor that was released
Wednesday, testing to date indicates the TCE contamination may have
come from a different source from that of the perchlorate and NDMA.

Next year EPA will begin sampling wells around other missile sites in
the area, including one near Medical Lake, said Calvin Terada, an
emergency response coordinator