Aquifer Comment Period Ends Soon
The deadline to comment on a proposal for a new sole-source aquifer system southwest of Spokane is less than a month away.
After Feb. 17, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will decide whether the Eastern Columbia Plateau Aquifer System is the sole source of drinking water for 300,000 people living in a 14,000 square-mile area.
The system stretches east from the Columbia River and includes all of Douglas, Grant, Lincoln, Adams, Franklin and Whitman counties, parts of Spokane County and, in Idaho, portions of Benewah, Nez Perce and Latah counties.
The comment deadline has already been extended twice at the request of rural elected officials and farm groups who asked for more time. More than 200 people and organizations have commented and there will be no further extensions, said Roger Mochnick, chief of the EPA’s ground water section in Seattle.
The Palouse-Clearwater Environmental Institute of Moscow, Idaho, petitioned the EPA in January 1993 to make the designation.
The issue has been controversial, colliding with the politics of garbage in Eastern Washington.
Waste Management Inc., which wants to build a huge regional garbage dump over the aquifer near Washtucna, opposes the designation.
The proposal has also caught flak from rural county commissioners, who fear it could hurt business and agriculture.
But others are urging EPA to resist pressures to defer the aquifer decision.
The Organization to Preserve Agricultural Lands (OPAL), a farm group fighting the Waste Management dump, is pressing EPA to act quickly.
Former Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus also intervened last November.
In a letter to EPA Administrator Carol Browner, Andrus complained that EPA delays are “totally unacceptable” and only serve to give Waste Management a chance to get its landfill permit before the sole source designation is made.
If the aquifer system is made official before Waste Management gets its permit, it could make the private landfill more expensive to build.
The designation would subject all projects getting federal money to an EPA review if they have a potential impact on ground water quality, Mochnick said.
A new U.S. Geological Survey report on the aquifer system is available this week at USGS offices in Tacoma, Pasco and Spokane.
Starting Monday, EPA will mail copies of the report. Requests should be addressed to Scott Downey, U.S. EPA (WD-133) 1200 Sixth Avenue, Seattle WA, 98101.
xxxx TO COMMENT: Starting Monday, EPA will mail copies of the report. Requests should be addressed to Scott Downey, U.S. EPA (WD-133) 1200 Sixth Avenue, Seattle WA, 98101.