Why Now?
On April 23, Spokane County Commissioner Al French held a meeting at the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office Regional Training Center (“the small arms range”) on West Medical Lake Road (Hwy 902). At that meeting he offered an aspirational plan for dealing with the problem of PFAS contamination of well water on the West Plains. The tone of Mr. French’s slide presentation seemed to be “Everyone stay calm, I, Al French, have been working diligently on this problem and I have a solution.”
Where was Mr. French when West Plains well water contamination with PFAS first came to light in 2017-2018? Both Fairchild Air Force Base and Spokane International Airport (SIA) had used PFAS-containing aqueous film-forming foams (AFFF) in firefighting drills for decades. Fairchild acknowledged its contribution to the problem early on. Thanks to a public records request we know that wells on SIA’s property also tested PFAS-positive in 2017 and again in 2019, but officials at SIA were silent. Mr. French served (and serves) on the boards of both SIA and S3R3 Solutions, a public/private partnership dedicated to development of the West Plains. Larry Krauter, the CEO of SIA, works with Mr. French on both of these boards. It strains credulity to imagine that Mr. French was not aware of the PHAS-positive well tests.
Furthermore, as a Spokane County Commissioner representing the people of the West Plains, the plight of those drinking PFAS contaminated well water ought to have been a primary concern as soon as Fairchild and Airway Heights knew of the contamination in 2017-18. Instead, even in 2021 when Spokane County was asked to administer a grant of $450,000 to further investigate the extent of the contamination in private wells, Mr. French quietly removed it from the Commission’s meeting agenda (See below).
So why Mr. French’s sudden interest in presenting a plan to address PFAS contamination on the West Plains? There is an election this fall. Mr. French is on the ballot and he has a very credible challenger with deep roots in the West Plains, Molly Marshall.
“The Plan”
Here is Commissioner French’s Plan as presented:
- Spokane County currently processes 8mgd [million gallons/day] of wastewater at the Spokane Valley Water Reclamation Center
- Transfer 8mgd of treated water via Spokane River to 7 Mile future well site
- Pump and pipe water to the West Plains for distribution to every property, both in and outside of the cities that have been impacted by PFAS/PFOS
- Establish a Water Utility of the members of the Leadership Group to manage water for the future
Mr. French’s cited encouraging quotes from two unnamed people: “Comment from E.P.A. Region 10 Director” and “Comment from Legislative Aide to Congresswoman McMorris Rodgers.” These are not agency sign-offs. They are off-the-cuff comments lauding a novel idea. One must ask if Mr. French has been working diligently on the Plan, why representatives of the agencies he says he’s been working with did not speak at the meeting.
The illustrations in the slide show presented by Mr. French came from the Spokane Valley—Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer Atlas, which is available through an online search or through the Spokane County or City of Spokane websites.
The last slide in the show declared the intent to “Engineer water line to West Plains and properties” and “Construct water distribution system.”
The idea of Airway Heights drilling a new well near the Seven Mile Bridge Road as an alternative to continuing to pipe SVRP aquifer water from the City of Spokane is not new. The Seven Mile well proposal was discussed at length in the Spokesman two and half years ago in an article that made no mention of any involvement by Commissioner French. It appears that what Mr. French now adds to the Seven Mile well proposal is a water accounting trick: balance the withdrawal of water at a new Seven Mile well against water put into the SVRP Aquifer by the Spokane County Water Reclamation Facility (read sewerage treatment plant) near Freya and Trent. He then proposes to use Superfund dollars (as yet not available) to install piping from the Seven Mile well not just to Airway Heights but to every private holding on the West Plains.
The presentation struck many as sketchy and largely aspirational. It was not universally well-received. Last Tuesday at the 2PM Spokane County Commissioners legislative session one of the residents of the West Plains had the temerity to confront Mr. French during the public comments period. You can watch the presentation here. It starts at about 2:00 (minutes) and runs three minutes. Mr. French, after two other unrelated public comments, offers a rebuttal. His comments run from 9:30 for another three minutes.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. I highly recommend reading Tim Connor’s “AL FRENCH AND THE “FOREVER CHEMICALS” COVER-UP” published December 23, 2023. It offers detailed insight into the behind-the-scenes actions of SIA officials and Mr. French.
On what SIA officials knew—and when:
Additional testing revealed the PFAS contamination had spread well beyond Airway Heights. The Air Force expanded its response, offering free well water testing and providing water treatment systems to private well owners if tests found PFAS above a federal health advisory limit of 70 parts per trillion. By then, the management at nearby Spokane International Airport (aka Geiger Field) had test results revealing PFAS contamination in its groundwater [results obtained in 2017 and 2019]. Yet, the only thing SIA was offering its neighbors was its silence.
Emails obtained in response to public records requests offer compelling evidence that at least four SIA officials, including the airport’s CEO and public affairs director, knew about the groundwater contamination in 2017. There is no evidence the airport alerted public health officials.
As to Commissioner French’s behind-the-scenes effort to stifle further research into the extent of private well PFAS contamination:
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.’”
“I’m just very concerned about being potentially implicated in what I see as an obvious attempt on the part of the airport director and potentially others to hide information. And I can tell you that when I spoke to you last time, [in early June of this year] I was unaware. I was as surprised as anybody to learn that the airport board or the airport management was aware of PFAS in their wells as long ago as 2017 and 2019…it just makes me want to ask those folks out there ‘what did you know and when did you know it? In my opinion it’s lying by omission.”
–Spokane County Environmental Services Manager Rob Lindsay
Lindsay conveyed the bad news to Hermanson. Hermanson says Lindsay told him French said he’d pulled the item at the behest of a top airport official “who didn’t want people out there basically doing this work.”