County OKs new water link

Spokane County will spend $40,000 to $50,000 to connect 34 Colbert-area homes to the Whitworth Water District after the recent discovery that the North Glen community well is contaminated by a previously unmonitored chemical.

The north Spokane residents live near the Colbert landfill, which closed in the mid-1980s and may have caused the contamination. Spokane County has been paying for bottled water delivery for most of the households there, even though there are no federal or state drinking-water standards related to the chemical stabilizer.

Meanwhile, several other water districts are considering permanently chlorinating their water after issuing boil orders last month due to bacterial contamination of their systems.

North Glen Water Association President Chan Bailey said his neighbors will be happy with the county’s decision to temporarily connect them to the Whitworth water system. That link will likely become permanent in the near future.

“We don’t want to wait,” Bailey said.

The chemical 1,4-dioxane is primarily used as a stabilizer for solvents and also found in trace amounts in some shampoos, detergents and cosmetics. Tests in September found concentrations of 11 parts per billion, above the state cleanup level of 7.95 parts per billion.

It cannot be filtered out or treated by boiling. Though dioxane’s effects on humans are unknown, it has been found to cause liver and kidney damage in rats.

In other parts of the county, the contamination problem has been with bacteria, not chemicals.

Parts of Greenacres, east Spokane and north Spokane County were under boil orders at various times in October. Their systems have all since been declared clean, but officials are continuing chlorination, said Ed Parry, an engineer with the Washington Department of Health’s drinking water division.

“We here don’t really have any hard evidence of what caused this in any of the systems,” said Parry.

But two water district managers said the rash of E. coli contamination may be due to people improperly blowing out their sprinkler systems, causing irrigation water to backflow into main water lines.

“The people who do this service don’t have any kind of certification,” said Ty Wick, general manager of Spokane County Water District 3.

In the Greenacres area, Bob Ashcraft agreed.

Ashcraft manages Consolidated Irrigation District No. 19, which serves residential areas north of the Spokane River, and the Spokane Valley Mall and other commercial and residential areas south of the river.

A portion including two schools and 5,000 residents was put on a boil order for part of October when E. coli was detected in the system.

Contamination sources such as someone pouring something into a reservoir or a bird or other animal falling into a reservoir were ruled out, said Ashcraft. That leaves sprinkler backflow as the most likely culprit, he added.

“It it’s not done correctly, if they don’t shut the valve that valves off the water going back to the water main, they can force whatever is in the sprinkler system back into the water main,” he said.

District 3 will be fully chlorinated by spring.

“It’s an insurance policy,” Wick said.

Ashcraft said he will recommend that his district’s board of directors approve year-round chlorination to prevent the chance of future E. coli problems. The modifications will cost about $25,000 per well.

“If you lose people’s confidence, it’s very difficult to get it back,” he said. “Our main point is to provide clean, safe drinking water for our customers.”