Water questions unanswered

As the president of a public water system that supplies water to 49 homes on the West Plains, I would like to comment on the way that Fairchild Air Force Base, the state, and the city of Airway Heights have handled the water contamination. There has been no guidance, direction or coordination to the other public water systems located throughout the West Plains.

I attended the meeting held at Medical Lake High School to get questions answered. After listening to prepared speeches by the base commander and other officials, we were told to fill out a comment card. Disappointing, to say the least.

We decided to test our two wells, at our own expense, and they came back negative. There has been no outreach to the other public systems to determine the extent of the contamination. What really upsets me is that Airway Heights was allowed to dump over 25 million gallons of contaminated water back onto the ground and into the same aquifer that we pump our water out of.

There are a lot of unanswered questions, but that’s okay, Airway Heights is on Spokane city water now, and to hell with everybody else!

Jerry Goertz, President, Deep Creek Ranchette’s Water Association

Medical Lake