Wells in Deep Creek area tainted
A former Nike missile battery is the suspected source of groundwater contamination discovered in 19 wells in the Deep Creek area west of Spokane, local and federal environmental experts said on Wednesday.
Of the three toxic compounds found in well water on and around property now owned by Hutterite families on the West Plains, one was commonly used by the military as an engine degreaser and the others are typically found in rocket fuel, the experts said.
Two of the three chemicals were found at levels above what is currently considered safe for human consumption. It could not be determined how long the groundwater has been contaminated, nor what the long-term health effects might be.
“The combination of these three chemicals is fairly unique,” said Harry Craig, remedial project manager for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “The only places that I’ve seen that is at rocket motor facilities.”
A spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, which is responsible for environmental cleanup of military installations, said the corps is evaluating the EPA’s data to determine whether the U.S. Department of Defense is responsible for the contamination.
“The sample areas EPA is looking at are quite a ways away (from the Nike site) and scattered around,” corps spokesman Steve Cosgrove said on Wednesday. “At this point we don’t have sufficient information.”
But the discovery of these chemicals so close to a former military installation led the EPA to notify the corps on May 16 about the potential health threat.
Installed in the mid-1950s, Nike anti-aircraft guided missiles were once the last line of defense against a potential bomber attack on a specific target, such as Fairchild Air Force Base or the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. The missiles were rendered obsolete by the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles, and removed from their installations by 1966.
Like most Nike installations, the Deep Creek site was actually at two locations. The “launcher area” was where the missiles awaited deployment in a fortified underground magazine. Within 3.5 miles was the “integrated fire control area” with radar and computer systems to spot and track enemy aircraft and guide the missiles.
In 2004, as part of an EPA assessment of “formerly used defense sites,” or FUDS, a well once owned by the military was tested on Euclid Road between the two Nike sites. Results released last year showed the well to be contaminated with the solvent trichloroethylene, or TCE, linked to liver, kidney and lung cancer.
The EPA tested other wells in the immediate area and found perchlorate, a naturally occurring or man-made salt used as the primary ingredient of solid rocket fuel, in 19 wells. In five of those wells, the EPA found N-nitrosodimethylamine, or NDMA, an igniter for rocket fuel. It also found TCE in two of the 19 wells.
TCE was found at levels as high as 210 parts per billion. The EPA has established a “maximum contaminate level” for TCE at 5 parts per billion.
The much more toxic NDMA was found at levels as high as 2.6 parts per trillion. Though the EPA has not yet established a maximum level considered safe for the suspected carcinogen, the agency has set a “preliminary remediation goal” of 1.3 parts per trillion.
Perchlorate, which can disrupt thyroid function and the central nervous systems of fetuses and infants and is believed linked to some cancers, was found at a level as high as 2.1 parts per billion, less than the preliminary remediation goal of 3.6 parts per billion.
Mike LaScuola, environmental health specialist for the Spokane Regional Health District, was assigned the task of explaining the potential health risk to the 19 affected families.
“What we are trying to tell folks is we found this in your water, we don’t know how long it’s been there, it’s not an immediate health risk,” LaScuola said.
He said the long-term health risks of these chemicals appear to be low at these levels.
Filter systems have been installed at those wells found to be contaminated with TCE, said Renee Dagseth, community involvement coordinator for the EPA.
Cosgrove, of the Corps of Engineers, said it has yet to be determined whether the contaminants are linked to the military sites and suggested there could be other explanations as to their source. Perchlorate and NDMA could have come from fertilizer, for example. TCE could have been used to clean agricultural machinery, he said.
As to whether the corps will be assisting in the cleanup, Cosgrove said, that decision is months away. The EPA, the Agency for Toxic Substances Disease Registry, the Spokane Regional Health District and the state Department of Health are all involved in the “Euclid Road Project,” as it has become known.
The investigation of when and how the groundwater was contaminated continues, Dagseth said.
Federal, state and local health officials of will conduct a public information meeting at the Deep Creek Grange on June 22.