It’s easy to point fingers at the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Co. for allowing a wastewater leak to reach the region’s sole-source aquifer. After all, the refueling company failed to detect the spill for months. And the railroad has had a big bull’s-eye painted on it since opening the controversial depot last year.

However, many other companies and individuals foul our drinking water in myriad ways.

Our drinking water is threatened whenever someone flushes old paint down a toilet, or whenever an amateur mechanic disposes of used motor oil or antifreeze down a storm drain. The aquifer suffers whenever septic tanks in the Spokane Valley overflow. Leachate from old landfills, leaks from forgotten underground storage tanks and runoff from gas spills on service station concrete add to the unhealthy mix of chemicals shining on the surface of our subsurface lake.

Fortunately, the aquifer has had sufficient flow to flush contaminants, and region wells are deep enough to suck water from beneath the surface of the aquifer. Otherwise, consumers would be complaining about the taste of their water. Controversies involving the refueling depot and proposed power plants on the Rathdrum Prairie awoke the region to the possible risk of some industrial projects located above our drinking water. But when are elected officials going to get serious about the ongoing risk posed by septic tanks, aging storage tanks, growth, lack of regulations and poor habits?

Spokane County residents have denounced North Idaho for contamination of surface and underground water upstream, but they don’t seem as concerned to push septic tank abatement in the Spokane Valley. Despite the threat of lawsuits, the Panhandle Health District launched an aggressive septic abatement program in the 1970s on the Rathdrum Prairie that spilled over into Post Falls and Coeur d’Alene. While environmentalists fight Spokane County over pollution limits for a proposed sewer plant, stalling septic abatement in the Spokane Valley, Kootenai County has protected drinking water for decades.

The region should be concerned about the potential for additional contamination posed by the BNSF refueling depot. But it also should be worried about the petroleum and PCBs that have leaked into the groundwater from Kaiser’s Trentwood aluminum plant site in the Spokane Valley and the two spills that contaminated the aquifer and transformed Tosco Spokane Terminal, in the Hillyard area, into a Superfund site. At capacity, the terminal has approximately 391,500 gallons of petroleum products, stored in tanks that aren’t as protected as the BNSF site.

Both sides of the state line should be concerned about hundreds of leaking storage tanks. Here, Washington is light years ahead of Idaho, which is the only state without a tank inspection program. Still, only 52 percent of the underground storage tanks in Washington are in compliance with federal laws.

Spokane and Kootenai counties have too much to clean in their own back yards to blame each other for environmental problems. The neighbors should continue to educate residents on the importance of the aquifer. Also, they should find a way to drop their guards and work together to protect this vital resource.