Constituents file a Petition to Recall Commissioner French
Tuesday, August 27, a week ago yesterday, a group of aggrieved citizens filed a petition with the county auditor seeking to recall their representative to Spokane County government, Spokane County Commissioner Al French (District 5, see P.S. below). The petition, a legal document of one hundred and fourteen pages, details the evidence that Mr. French, serving in a number of official capacities, knew seven years ago that Spokane International Airport (SIA) was likely a major source of PFAS contamination on the West Plains. Once the source of PFAS at SIA became known, Mr. French quietly worked to block efforts to investigate and quantify the extent of the poison that had leached into the groundwater from the Airport. As a result, for seven years more than necessary many of Mr. French’s constituents drank PFAS-contaminated water and provided that water to their children, their guests, their livestock, and their gardens.
Let’s stop here for a minute and contemplate what could have been were it not for Mr. French’s efforts to duck the issue. Per- and PolyFluoroAlkyl Substances (PFAS), aka “forever chemicals,” were invented in the late 1930s and have been manufactured and used in a whole slew of products since the late 1940s, including Teflon, Scotchgard, a variety of waterproofing products, and, crucially, aqueous fire-fighting films (AFFF) used for decades both for practice and in actually fighting fuel fires at airports and military bases. Meanwhile, the risks to human health of these chemicals have only gradually become clear. (For details of how that clarity came about stream the movie “Dark Waters” [available on Netflix] and/or read here.)
In the face of mounting evidence, in 2017 Fairchild Air Force Base (FAFB) disclosed that test wells on the Base showed high concentrations of PFAS chemicals, presumably from decades of practice and use of PFAS-containing Aqueous Fire-Fighting Films. FAFB offered testing of wells in the area and made efforts to provide water to those whose wells were found to be contaminated. Considering the hydrogeology of the area, FAFB offered well testing only to private well owners west of Hayford Rd. When it became clear that the residents of Airway Heights had been drinking water, probably for decades, from municipal wells that contained high levels of PFAS, the whole issue made news. Airway Heights quickly arranged to obtain purer water via City of Spokane wells that draw from a different water source.
Meanwhile, at least some concerned private well owners drawing water from wells east of Hayford Rd inquired of Spokane International Airport (SIA) if SIA might also be leaching PFAS. Quietly, test wells were drilled at SIA and high concentrations of PFAS were detected in three of four of them—but the results were kept quiet.
In a Parallel Universe
Now imagine for a moment what would have happened if Commissioner French had honestly and openly sought to bring SIA’s PFAS contamination to the attention of the Health District, the Washington State Department of Ecology, and/or the federal EPA. At the time Mr. French sat on the County Commission, the Airport Board, the board of the Spokane Regional Health District, and S3R3, a cryptically-named, private/public development group. What if, given all those connections, the news from FAFB, and awareness of the SIA test well results, Mr. French had not only made broadly public the finding of contaminated test wells, but had also sought funding for private well testing, and began working with other government agencies to find and provide uncontaminated water to his constituents? In this parallel universe it is fair to assume that Mr. French would not be blamed (as he is now) either for the existence of the contamination or for the seven years of ongoing poisoning of his constituents. Constituents who had been drinking water contaminated with PFAS leaching from SIA would not have been happy campers, and, certainly, those constituents would have sought compensation, but Mr. French could not have been blamed. He would have been seen as doing the right thing: seeking to protect the lives and health of his constituents.
It’s no secret that Mr. French is deeply involved in plans to further develop tracts of property on the plains west of the City of Spokane (some of which land is within City of Spokane boundaries). As the elected Spokane County representative (and sometimes as chairman) on the board of SIA and his (and Krauter’s) seat(s) on the board of the private/public development group, S3R3, French has been deeply invested in West Plains development for years. Disclosure of SIA as a potentially major source of PFAS contamination had to be seen by French and friends as a threat to their development goals and to the value of all that land—a factor that must have figured large in their evident hope that the whole PFAS issue would just blow over—or at least that they could duck and let Fairchild Air Force Base shoulder all the blame.
But what does it take to sacrifice the health and well-being of your constituents to the dogged pursuit of business development and financial gain? Here I postulate that rather than believing they were actually putting constituents at risk, Mr. French and his ally, Larry Krauter, the CEO of SIA, simply doubted (or denied) the mounting scientific evidence that “forever chemicals” are a risk to human health. From an excellent investigative piece in RANGE by Aaron Hedge [the bold is mine]:
After a regulatory change by the Washington Department of Ecology (DoE) in 2021 requiring the disclosure of PFAS contamination, Krauter and SIA still didn’t disclose the West Plains contamination — even to Ecology itself. DoE only learned about the airport’s contamination after a private citizen requested the records and sent them to the state agency.
And while Krauter and his colleagues weren’t disclosing the contamination to the public, they also weren’t ignoring forever chemicals. In fact, PFAS was a top priority for airport officials.
They were actively lobbying to keep using them.
Internal emails obtained by RANGE through a public records request show that in 2020, SIA concentrated its efforts on keeping the state of Washington from regulating the chemicals at airports. Airport officials sent letters threatening legal action to the Legislature, which was considering legislation that would ban PFAS in AFFF at airports, and in 2020 even flew to Washington, D.C., in part to meet with the FAA’s top lawyer about that proposed legislation.
It is hard to imagine that Mr. Krauter and Mr. French did not discuss this lobbying effort.
Insofar as a person’s individual stock picks speak of their beliefs, Al French’s stock picks may be illustrative. He holds stock in Chemours, DuPont and Corteva, three of four chemical companies (3M is the fourth) that have reached billion dollar agreements to settle claims concerning PFAS contamination. Mr. French also owns Dow Chemical stock, another flagship of the chemical industry. These four companies comprise nearly a third of his individual stock portfolio. (Nearly another third are fossil fuel companies.)
If Mr. French, as I suspect, privately believes that the health risks of drinking PFAS-laden water are overblown, it would not be the first time he has quietly substituted his personal judgement for scientific evidence and engaged in political efforts to thwart the science. Mr. French’s stated position that “climate change is a politically driven agenda” (See Al French vs. 170 years of Science) and his efforts to block legislation to curtail additional natural gas infrastructure are one example. His carefully-plotted, very-political, mostly behind the scenes efforts to fire Dr. Bob Lutz from his position with the Spokane Regional Health District during the Covid pandemic in 2020 is another.
Still, imperiling the health of his constituents, is a new low—and now Mr. French may well face a recall election fueled by a hornet’s nest of angry voters worried about their health, their children, their livestock, and their property values.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. Mr. French represents Commissioner District 5 (click for map), west and southwest Spokane County including Cheney, Airway Heights, Medical Lake and some western parts of the City of Spokane.