Asphalt plant near river faces challenge
Spokane Valley isn’t doing enough to protect its citizens from an asphalt plant above a public well and the Spokane River, say three groups challenging the city’s handling of the matter.
The plant, across the river from Plantes Ferry Park and owned by Road Products Inc., was poised to receive a building permit from the Spokane Valley so a boiler for heating liquid asphalt and storage tanks could be added.
That permit has been put on hold now that three groups – the Irvin Water District, Sierra Club and Friends of the Aquifer – have appealed the city’s decision to allow the project without intense environmental review. They’ve asked that the most stringent review required by law, an environmental impact statement, or EIS, be demanded before the project is allowed. The city asserts any environmental risks can be handled through rules attached to Road Products’ building permit.
“An EIS is required only for projects where significant environmental impacts cannot be mitigated through conditions,” said Greg McCormick, Spokane Valley planning manager. “I guess in the city’s opinion, (the project) didn’t reach that level.”
Roughly 3,300 residents rely on drinking water drawn 68 feet beneath the plant, said Glenn Terry, Irvin Water District manager. The Spokane River is 109 yards north of the site.
Road Products owner David K. Lawless did not return calls for comment placed to his office over two days.
Making Road Products’ permit conditional isn’t going to protect the public, said Terry. Construction has already started on the project, Terry said. And eight months ago, Road Products Inc. was faulted by state officials for pouring contaminants on the ground, Terry said.
McCormick said the construction that’s taken place is allowable as long as it can be inspected and the boiler for heating the liquid asphalt isn’t hooked up.
Opponents to the project say because construction has started, Road Products is really asking for forgiveness rather than permission to build.
Last December, the State Department of Ecology found that instead of taking its dangerous paint waste to a permitted disposal facility as state law requires, Road Products poured the waste over perforated landscape fabric, where the paint was allowed to evaporate before leftover solids were placed in a trash bin.
In faulting Road Products, Ecology cited the same chapter of state dangerous waste laws that Spokane Valley is now asking the company to comply with as a condition for its building permit.
Lawless is appealing the Ecology action, arguing, among other things, that the agency’s order includes cleanup demands that can’t be met and contamination test results that can’t be produced.
McCormick said the matter couldn’t be weighed.
“We have a copy of the DOE information in our file, so yes that was known to us,” McCormick said. “But frankly, from the city’s perspective that is running its own track. That pending action is between the DOE and the landowner, and the city has an obligation to process building permits.”
If there was ever a case requiring the history of the applicant and the area to be considered, the asphalt plant’s building permit is it, opponents say.
Irvin’s wellhead, which is 133 yards downhill from the asphalt business, has a history of easy contamination from above. An E. coli outbreak devastated Irvin Water District three years ago after gopher droppings from a neighborhood drainpipe washed into a nearby drywell.
The well near the asphalt business pumps roughly 1,800 gallons a minute for the residents of the district, which stretches from the north side of Interstate 90 to the Spokane River and from Pines to Butler Road.
East Valley’s Trent Elementary School is an Irvin customer. Opponents to the asphalt plant described the district as a community of mostly low-income households and small businesses.
“It’s ridiculous,” said Julian Powers, of Friends of the Aquifer. “Here is a potentially disastrous problem, and if they can’t require an environmental impact statement then something is wrong.”