Who is speaking?
I am tired of hearing that “Spokane County did X” or “a spokesperson for Spokane International Airport said Y.” Neither Spokane County nor Spokane International Airport (SIA) is actually capable of doing or saying anything. They are entities within which people, some of them elected, some appointed, and some salaried, make decisions. Those decisions then are communicated to the reading and listening public as if the entity itself were speaking.
My frustration with this usage spilled over as I read Amanda Sullendar’s article last Tuesday, April 2, in the Spokesman “Not ‘reasonable’: Spokane International Airport hits back against state PFAS cleanup order.”
The article opens with this paragraph:
Spokane International Airport is pushing back against a “disappointing” state Department of Ecology order to begin PFAS cleanup planning – stating the airport will move forward with its own investigation into the presence of the toxic chemicals.
The underlying issue here is the health of adults and children living on the West Plains whose well water is contaminated with high levels of Per- and polyFluoroAlkyl Substances (PFAS). The contamination is leaching in the West Plains groundwater from unintentional concentrations of PFAS in soil at Fairchild Air Force Base and Spokane International Airport. At both locations aqueous film-forming foams (AFFF) containing certain PFAS were used during practice fire-fighting exercises for decades. (See Science and the PFAS Story for more detail.)
The administration of Fairchild Air Force Base has been fairly transparent and proactive about Fairchild’s contribution to the problem of contaminated water, efforts to mitigate the exposure of the people affected, and planning to deal with the cleanup of Fairchild’s PFAS deposit.
In contrast, the administration of Spokane International Airport has endeavored to avoid disclosure of high levels of PFAS in test wells at SIA (known since 2017), failed to disclose those findings even after a regulatory change in 2021 required it, and actively lobbied the state legislature and the FAA not to ban the use of PFAS-containing aqueous film-forming foams(AFFF), even threatening legal action if the Washington State legislature were to pass a ban on the use of AFFF.
What the hell is going on here? The people in control at the Spokane International Airport (SIA) have known since 2017 that test wells on SIA’s property showed elevated levels of PFAS. Not only were they aware of the use of aqueous fire-fighting foams (AFFF) at SIA for decades, but AFFFs were still in use at SIA in 2017. These same people at SIA were doubtless aware of increasingly well-documented health risks of PFAS ingestion, the litigation concerning PFAS poisoning elsewhere in the U.S., and the fact that PFAS had shown up in the municipal wells and the bloodstreams of the people of Airway Heights. From all of this they had to have understood that Spokane International Airport harbored somewhere on its soil concentration of PFAS that was leaching and continues to leach into the groundwater of the West Plains—contamination that endangers the health and property of the people of the West Plains.
In view of all that, the second paragraph of Ms. Sullendar’s article is grimly laughable:
“The Spokane International Airport cares about the safety of our passengers, staff and communities we serve, which is why we diligently assess as many considerations as possible in our work,” reads a statement from Spokane International Airport spokesperson Todd Woodard.
The people living on the West Plains who draw their water from wells contaminated with PFAS from the Airport must not be among those whose “communities we serve.”
Furthermore, considering the lack of acknowledgement of the whole issue by the people in charge at SIA, indeed, their concerted efforts to twist out of the obvious, the earlier first paragraph statement that “the airport will move forward with its own investigation into the presence of the toxic chemicals” should be worrisome.
So for whom does SIA spokesperson Todd Woodard speak, since “Spokane International Airport” itself possesses neither an ass to kick nor a soul to damn?
SIA, Felts Field, and the Airport Business Park (collectively “Spokane Airports”) is owned by Spokane County and the City of Spokane and overseen by the Spokane Airport Board. The Board has been in existence since 1962. It derives its existence and authority from state law, specifically RCW 14.08.
The Board, for whom one is supposed to imagine that Mr. Woodward is speaking, consists of seven members (see P.S. below for the full roster). Prominent among them is Spokane County Commissioner Al French, who serves as vice chair. The board hires a chief executive officer (CEO). SIA CEO Larry Krauter oversees daily operations and reports to the board. How and if an issue is presented to board depends a lot on the mindset of the CEO and those members of the board with whom he closely associates. (The board formally meets only once each month.)
Spokane County Commissioner French, an architect and developer, has long been involved in commercial development of the West Plains. French’s sense of ownership and control over the Airport Board, as well as his association with and admiration for CEO Krauter is clear. It was on display in a bizarre eruption by French during an afternoon Spokane County Commissioner meeting in January 2023. Apparently bristling over recently-seated Commissioner Jordan’s desire for another week to consider a French-proposed new appointment to the Airport Board, Mr. French launched into an prepared half hour diatribe in which he extolled the virtues of CEO Krauter and excoriated the outgoing board member. You can watch French’s extended outburst here (start at 28:50) or read about it in a Spokesman article. (These meetings often last less than half an hour. This one extended to an hour and forty minutes.)
As if to further highlight their association, Commissioner French and SIA CEO Krauter both figure prominently on another Airport-related entity, a public/private group called S3R3 Solutions dedicated to growing business primarily on the West Plains. French is the chair and Krauter the vice chair of S3R3.
From the discovery of PFAS contamination in the soil and water on the property of Spokane International Airport in 2017 there was a clear moral choice for the leaders of both SIA and S3R3: work in good faith to protect the health of the community or withhold information, foot drag, and threaten lawsuits in the hope, somehow, of dodging the issue. They failed the test. For seven years they plunged ahead with condemnable disregard for the health of the people Mr. French was elected to serve.
Don’t expect an apology. That’s not the style. Expect more platitudes about “caring” and “balancing” like the one quoted above. How different all of this might have been if Commissioner French had prioritized transparency and human health.
Voters need to know who is actually speaking when an entity like Spokane International Airport is posed by the media as speaking for itself. Peel back the layers.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. Airport Board Composition: Two are elected officials, Spokane County Commissioner Al French, who serves as Vice Chair, and City of Spokane City Council President Betsy Wilkerson, listed as a “Member.” Jennifer West serves as Secretary. Brooke Baker Spink, Nancy Vorhees, and Max Kuney are the other appointed members rounding out the seven. French, Spink, and In addition the Airport CEO is Lawrence J. Krauter A.A.E., AICP. and the General Counsel for SIA is Brian Werst. From the county website:
P.P.S. Ms. Sullendar’s article appeared Tuesday, April 2. The Airport Board met three business days earlier on Thursday, March 28. The agenda for that meeting contains no mention of the Department of Ecology or of PFAS. I am unable to locate minutes from any Airport Board meeting posted on line, so any Board discussion of the topic of PFAS is opaque to the public.