Epa Officials Knew Aquifer Was At Risk Back In 1985
Eight years before an industrial solvent turned up in public and private water wells, state and federal investigators were told that serious amounts of pollutants had been dumped in a local septic system.
A 1985 probe by the Environmental Protection Agency found heavy metals and volatile organic compounds in the septic tank and a dry well behind Deming Industries. The company said it dumped the materials before changes in the law made the practice illegal.
The EPA, after looking at the site, concluded it can’t prove otherwise. Still, the report from the 1985 investigation said more work was needed on the Deming contamination.
That didn’t happen.
It took until the early 1990s, after trichloroethylene (TCE) showed up in three drinking water wells, before the investigation was revived. Now a plume of the solvent, commonly used as a degreaser and for dry cleaning, is in the Spokane-Rathrum Prairie aquifer. It is flowing toward Post Falls and Spokane.
Most regulators agree, in hindsight, a follow-up investigation shouldn’t have been delayed. One result of the delay is that the EPA and Idaho’s Division of Environmental Quality can’t say whether Deming or another two dozen suspected businesses and government operations dumped the TCE into the ground and ultimately the ground water.
That means that if Coeur d’Alene is forced to abandon its Hanley Avenue well or treat the water, taxpayers, instead of polluters, probably will foot the bill.
Also, EPA and DEQ officials agree that if there had been a more thorough investigation, a TCE source might have been located and removed before the solvent got into the ground water.
The reason someone dropped the ball is elusive. EPA officials say they believed Idaho regulators were going to do more with the Deming site.
Idaho DEQ officials said they didn’t have the money or the legal authority to do that work.
Those state officials involved in the investigation are no longer working for DEQ. Today’s officials speculate that part of the reason the Deming site was shuffled down the priority list is that it didn’t appear, in 1985, to be enough of a threat.
“Until there was evidence of ground-water contamination, I believe it ranked low on the priority list for EPA,” said John Sutherland of DEQ. “If things aren’t thought to be much of a threat, they don’t float to the top of the heap.”
EPA officials are scheduled to appear in Coeur d’Alene Sept. 6 to discuss the TCE contamination and a recently released report on the problem. Among the topics: Plans for more investigation.
, DataTimes