Wendel Loses Appeal Over Sewage Lagoons

A Valley businessman hoping to reopen a sewage dump site lost his last appeal to the Spokane County Health District.

Short of a court battle, the only recourse left for Larry Wendel, owner of Appleway Septic Tank Service, is to take his case to the state Pollution Control Hearing Board in Olympia. Wendel said he plans to appeal the decision.

For 11 years starting in 1983, Wendel operated two sewage lagoons about four miles northwest of Fairfield. Neighbors say the pits, where Appleway dumps sewage from home septic systems, threaten the environment and their health.

“Disgusting” was how Tom Miller, an attorney for the neighbors, described them Thursday.

The county health board reached the same conclusion in 1994 when it shut down the lagoons and ordered Wendel to submit an environmental impact statement.

In March, the board said Wendel had missed his deadline for completing the report, and would not be allowed to reopen the pits.

Wendel appealed that decision Thursday, saying he only missed the deadline because health district staff were uncooperative. However, the engineer working on the environmental review said the work was delayed primarily because Wendel was late paying his bills.

Wendel said losing the pits forces him to pay $85,000 to $100,000 a year to dump waste at the regional sewage treatment plant. In addition, he said, he’s spent more than $20,000 on the environmental review.

“Are those checks easy to come by and easy to write,” Wendel was asked by his attorney, Jim McDevitt.

“Not at all,” replied Wendel.

The majority of health board members said Wendel had not done enough to meet the deadline. They voted not to grant another extension.

“We cannot let things drag on forever,” said Spokane City Councilwoman Roberta Greene, a member of the board.

County Commissioner Phil Harris first voted to allow more time for the study. Harris changed his vote to an abstention, saying he had missed an earlier meeting and didn’t think he had enough information.

The meeting turned confrontational when county Commissioner Steve Hasson told Miller not to stray from the narrow focus of the hearing.

Miller then demanded Hasson abstain from voting, since Wendel was the commissioner’s campaign manager. Hasson did abstain, but also told the board that one of Miller’s clients on the issue, Paul Dashiell, threatened him in a Rockford restaurant.

“He threatened to take me outside,” said Hasson, as board chairwoman Phyllis Holmes rapped her gavel.

Dashiell, who was not at the meeting, said Friday that he only threatened to work for Hasson’s opponent in the next campaign.

“Now if that’s a threat, I did it,” Dashiell said.

, DataTimes