Search Widens For Source Of Pollution Epa Will Test Five More Sites, Seeking Source Of Industrial Solvent Polluting Cda Ground Water
Five more sites will be scrutinized by the Environmental Protection Agency in the search for sources of an industrial solvent in the city’s ground water.
Meanwhile, the city is going to idle a well this winter that shows traces of trichloroethylene pollution in hopes the problem will subside.
This news came from meetings Wednesday involving EPA and the Idaho Division of Environment Quality. Next spring, the EPA will test for TCE at Albertsons - the old Idaho Department of Transportation shop - three sites near Deming Industries, and at Interstate Concrete and Asphalt.
EPA has been looking for the source of TCE contamination since 1990, at the state’s request. There is a plume of TCE under Coeur d’Alene and it is moving toward Post Falls.
Two monitoring wells drilled by EPA unearthed TCE levels as high as 1,510 parts per billion under Deming Industries. The federal drinking water standard is 5 ppb.
Deming is negotiating a voluntary cleanup plan with the state. But it’s unlikely there only is one TCE source, said Mark Ader of the EPA.
TCE is thought to cause cancer if ingested over a long period of time. It was detected at extremely high levels in two wells suppling the Sunrise Terrace housing development in 1990, and forced their abandonment in 1992.
TCE exceeded federal levels at the city’s Hanley Avenue well for the first time in May. The city, sampling twice a month, hasn’t found pollution above federal limits since. The well will have to exceed federal TCE limits for a year before it has to be closed.
Some argue that the Hanley Avenue well never should have been drilled in light of pollution at Sunrise Terrace.
“Somebody stuck their head in the sand,” said Bob Unruh, vice president of the Sunrise Terrace Water Association.
City and state officials defend the decision. “We would have advised the city against (the well) if we had known about the plume,” said Brian Painter, a hydrogeologist with DEQ. TCE “is not a good thing to have in the groundwater.”
DEQ files show the Hanley site was selected in 1989, a year before TCE appeared at Sunrise. The city started drilling in March 1990, and three weeks later the Sunrise contamination was discovered.
The city was worried that “their well will pull in the TCE plume while operating” according to a May 1990 report by DEQ. But tests done both before and after the well were finished indicated Hanley water was clean, said Jim Markley, the city’s water superintendent.
Tests of nearby wells were similarly clean, said DEQ’s Painter. The city was on the verge of summer water shortages, needed the well for fire protection and to bolster pressure.
, DataTimes