Water Demand Keeps Tainted Well Operating Update On Contamination Topic Of Thursday Meeting

The city has not been able to shut off its solvent-tainted well for the winter as planned because water demand is too high.

The aim was to quit using the Hanley Avenue well, hoping trichloroethylene (TCE) pollution would drift away from Coeur d’Alene’s newest and strongest water source. The city was only able to keep the well off-line for about a week.

The city uses five wells in the summer. Since 1990, it has supplied all of Coeur d’Alene’s winter water needs with the Hanley Avenue well alone.

When it realized it had to use the Hanley Avenue well, the city also brought another well on line for the winter. That will reduce the amount of water that will come from Hanley, said Jim Markley, city water superintendent.

“Our goal is to run it as little as we can,” Markley said.

The good news is that TCE levels continue to drop in the Hanley Avenue well. In mid-October, after it had been shut down for a week, a water sample revealed less than 1 part per billion of TCE in the well.

Federal drinking water standards are violated when levels exceed 5 parts per billion for a year.

Traces of TCE, a common industrial solvent, started appearing in quarterly water samples at the Hanley well three years ago. Then last May, levels exceeded 5 parts per billion.

That has raised concern about the well and about a plume of TCE in the aquifer that is traveling from Coeur d’Alene toward Post Falls. The plume likely will reach Post Falls in about five years.

In 1992, the Sunrise Terrace development in north Coeur d’Alene had to abandon two wells with five times the legal concentration of TCE. The Sunrise Terrace wells showed similar fluctuations in TCE levels.

Idaho Division of Environmental Quality officials will hold a meeting Thursday to discuss the latest news on contamination in Coeur d’Alene’s groundwater. It begins at 7 p.m., downstairs at the Kootenai County Cooperative Extension Office.

DEQ officials will discuss Deming Industries plans to clean up TCE contamination on its property. Deming entered into a legally binding agreement to deal with the pollution at its metal plating plant on Government Way in September, said Anne Pressentin of DEQ.

The Environmental Protection Agency identified Deming as one of the likely sources of the TCE. But there clearly are other sources, and EPA will probe additional sites next spring.

Deming will submit a preliminary plan in early January for dealing with the TCE. Part of the cleanup likely will involve using vacuum pumps to extract TCE vapor from the soil, said John Sutherland, of DEQ.

“It’s going to be a fairly significant investment on Deming’s part,” Sutherland said.

Mike Deming, company vice president, voluntarily signed the cleanup agreement. All during the investigation, “Mike was telling us they wanted to do the right thing,” Sutherland said.

The state had other options if Deming hadn’t agreed to the cleanup. Those include taking the company to court and imposing formal penalties.

, DataTimes