Al French worked behind the scenes to keep people in the dark
In 2017, news spread that the municipal wells serving the City of Airway Heights out west of Spokane were contaminated with PFAS—and that the likely source was PFAS-laden fire-fighting film used at Fairchild Air Force Base for decades. At the time PFAS in a municipal well may have sounded like a local problem. Airway Heights soon abandoned its municipal wells and connected to the City of Spokane’s municipal water system, which draws from the Spokane Valley–Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer. At the time it might have seemed like the problem was solved.
To its credit, in 2017 Fairchild AFB took some ownership of the PFAS contamination that was also showing up in private wells, but the AFB limited its outreach to wells west of Hayford Road. They based this boundary on the likely slow flow of groundwater in a generally northeasterly direction from AFB, a flow limited to a paleo-channel in the basalt bedrock. The eastern edge of the paleo-channel, it was reasoned, would restrict the contamination from Fairchild AFB to the west side of Hayford Road.
So when PFAS began turning up at elevated levels in the private wells of homeowners on the east side of Hayford Road it was a hydrogeological puzzle begging for explanation. Thanks to the investigative journalism efforts of Tim Connor we know that, by 2020, a state grant of $450,000 through the Department of Ecology was available to test for PFAS in a scientifically-selected sample of private wells on the West Plains. What was needed to get the PFAS investigation off the ground was an official government entity willing to administer the grant.
For Spokane County to take on what was seen as an “‘ordinary’ ministerial task” for the benefit of the people on the West Plains would require the approval of what was then the three member Spokane County Commission. Al French was the logical one of the three commissioners to approach to put the grant administration on the county’s agenda. After all, Mr. French nominally represents the people living on the West Plains, and he was already very involved with development in that area, including business development associated with Spokane International Airport. (SIA and the surrounding land is governmentally part of the City of Spokane). One might have expected that Mr. French would be anxious to support an offer of outside money and expertise to clarify the problem of groundwater contamination affecting the health of his constituents, worried families whose children, cattle, chickens, and garden produce had been absorbing PFAS-laden water. But that’s not what happened. The quotes that follow are from a post by investigative journalist Tim Connor titled “Al French and the ‘Forever Chemicals’ Coverup.” (For additional detail on this problem I recommend visiting this webpage at Connor’s The Daily Rhubarb and reading the posts listed there starting with the oldest.)
The grant application was ready in February of 2020. The last box to check was a routine briefing for the county commissioners prior to their expected vote to approve the grant application. What Lindsay [the Environmental Services Manager for Spokane County’s water resources department] didn’t expect is the phone call he says he received from commissioner Al French the day before the commissioners’ meeting.
Lindsay says French called to tell him the item had been removed from the agenda. When I [Tim Connor] asked Lindsay if French had given a reason for pulling the item he said he had; that French was “concerned about the timing and the potential effect on the airport.”
“I think my response was ‘this isn’t going away,’” Lindsay added. “And he (French) said, ‘I know that.’”
What had not yet been revealed publicly by 2020 was that three years earlier test wells at Spokane International Airport (SIA) had been quietly sampled. Those samples showed elevated levels of PFAS. PFAS-containing fire-fighting film had been used at SIA in the past—making SIA itself another likely source of PFAS of at least some of the West Plains groundwater contamination. It seems that those officials at SIA who were aware of the 2017 SIA test well results were hoping Fairchild Air Force Base (i.e. the federal government) would take all the responsibility for the PFAS contamination of the West Plains groundwater and SIA could sneak under the radar.
At the time Mr. French refused to put the PFAS grant on the county commission’s agent he:
…held at least three key positions related to this story: county commissioner, airport board member (including the positions of vice chair and board secretary) and health district board member. French is also the chairman of “S3R3 Solutions” a state chartered “community empowerment zone” created to promote development and employment in the “West Plains Airport Area.” SIA CEO Larry Krauter is vice chair of S3R3…
With powerful positions and connections in all four of these entities Mr. French was well positioned to play behind-the-scenes political chess to block Spokane County from agreeing to administer the $450,000 grant in the hope of keeping SIA out of the spotlight. Having been blocked by Mr. French’s quiet refusal to put the request to administer the grant on the county agenda, other players connected to the grant offering approached the Spokane Regional Health District. But here, too, the county quietly blocked the effort. Before the Spokane Regional Health District’s Board could sign off on the grant it needed authorization from the county commission for Mike Hermanson, Spokane County’s water resources manager, to work on the project.
Two weeks later a grants administrator with Ecology’s toxic cleanup program [the agency offering the grant] sent a reminder that Ecology would need confirmation from both the county and the health district in order to release the funds. It was Hermanson who replied by email four days later: “I am still waiting direction on whether our program is in a position to accept the grant funding.”
Hermanson resigned his county position four months later. He says the obstruction on the PFAS study factored into his decision.
The three member Spokane County Board of County Commissioners led and dominated by Commissioner Al French (and possibly without even the awareness of the other two members, Josh Kerns and Mary Kuney) never publicly took up the issue of grant administration by the county. (Thanks to the Washington State Open Meeting Law it actually would have been illegal for Mr. French to have discussed the issue of the grant with either of the other two commissioners outside of a public meeting—so Kerns and Kuney have plausible deniability on this issue.)
What happened next is telling. Note that “the airport” in this quote certainly includes SIA’s CEO Larry Krauter as well as member of the airport board, vice chair, and board secretary Al French:
When the state Department of Ecology finally learned of the airport’s positive tests for PFAS it moved swiftly to name SIA as a “potentially liable person” and initiate an enforcement action under Washington’s Model Toxics Control Act. The airport’s response was to hire a Washington D.C.-based law firm to fire back at Ecology, sharply criticizing its investigation and threatening the agency with possible legal action for undermining its potential real estate sales.
How could threatening this lawsuit more plainly state that the airport and Mr. French were more interested in the value of real estate than they were interested in the health and safety of the people of the West Plains, people who were at the time still consuming PFAS contaminated water?
The only good news after all this systematic delay is that the grant itself did not die. The City of Medical Lake stepped in to administer the grant.
But that’s not the end of it. Mr. French, ever the astute politician, after working behind the scenes to delay or even scuttle efforts to test private wells on the West Plains, has now jumped on the testing bandwagon as if he had promoted the investigation from the very beginning. According to this YouTube video (start at 3:12) of Mr. French reading a prepared speech, “finding a solution to PFAS and PFOS contamination of the water source of Airway Heights and the West Plains” is to him “of critical importance” and a “national problem.” Somehow, after blocking well testing his statement rings hollow.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. In 2017 Fairchild AFB was already getting its water from the City of Spokane—as was the Spokane International Airport (SIA)—so people drinking the tap water overlying the sources of the PFAS contamination were not and are not drinking contaminated water. SIA is governmentally part of the City of Spokane.
P.P.S. I sketched out the 80 year background on Per- and polyFluoro Alkyl Substances (PFAS) in a post titled Science and the PFAS Story.