After years of silence on West Plains ‘forever chemicals’ — and with an election looming — County Commissioner Al French has promised to pipe water to ‘everybody’ with a contaminated well, but his plan is thin on detail. Meanwhile, he’s known about the contamination since 2017.
For years, the air force base relied on a now-outdated standard for ‘forever chemicals’ to assure West Plains well owners they were out of harm’s way. The EPA has established a much lower, legally-binding drinking water limit for PFAS, and Fairchild’s water provision program will likely expand.
As the blaze devastated Medical Lake last year, it also lit a pile of demolition debris on the campus of a state psychiatric hospital. DSHS officials say it occasionally flares but is not a threat to public safety or health.
After more than 6 years of patchwork testing and remediation of a chemical spill no one truly knows the scale of, a new water program will greatly expand the testing area and get a more holistic picture of the poison in West Plains wells.
The Airport has known about the ‘forever chemicals’ contamination in West Plains groundwater for 6 years. Rather than telling the public — even when required by law — CEO Larry Krauter and other officials quietly lobbied against regulation of the chemicals
Forever chemicals have made groundwater unsafe across the West Plains. Spokane International Airport officials knew for years they were partly to blame, but kept it quiet.
Widely used in many products, including firefighting compounds mandated for use at airports (like Spokane’s) and military bases (like Fairchild). They deplete slowly and are linked with serious health problems, including cancer
RANGE talks to Brian G. Henning, the Director of Gonzaga Center for Climate, Society, and the Environment, about the role climate change plays in driving extreme weather.
