Dec. 12, 2008 Valley lawmakers object to EPA's role in dirty wells issue -
While publicly acknowledging a drinking-water problem in their district for the first time, Lower Yakima Valley legislators said Monday that the federal government has no business getting involved in a solution...
Dec. 04, 2008 Officials will dig deep for solutions to dirty wells -
Federal officials launched an unprecedented effort here Thursday to attack the long-standing contamination of shallow drinking wells relied on by thousands of low-income rural residents in...
Nov. 06, 2008 EPA targets groundwater contamination -
The federal Environmental Protection Agency has begun bringing together local, state and federal agencies in an effort to solve groundwater contamination in the Lower Yakima Valley. The EPA action was prompted by a series of Yakima Herald-Republic stories published last month ab...


Editor's note - ...
The problem -
OUTLOOK -- Like many rural Lower Yakima Valley residents, Norma and Leonardo Solano used their well water for years with little thought. But in January, Norma Solano saw a television report about contamina...
Part 1: Why there's no systematic testing - With hundreds of square miles of irrigated farmland, the Lower Yakima Valley yields a bounty of fruit, hops, corn, hay and other crops. Tourists come to taste the wine and enjoy orchard-dotted vistas that have been compared to the Napa Valley, even Tuscan...
What are nitrates? - What are nitrates? A form of nitrogen and oxygen used by plants. Nitrates travel freely through water and can stay in soil for decades. Where do nitrates come from? A variety of sources. Since at least the 1940s, farmers have applied commercial fertiliz...
About the Lower Valley - ...
Part 2: Where's the accountability? - SUNNYSIDE -- After several years of bouts with diarrhea, headaches and general listlessness, Marci Ogden began to think the problem might be her well water. When a sample from her well in 2005 revealed bovine bacteria, her suspicions turned to a settling ...
Defining a CAFO - What, exactly, is a CAFO? It's hard to say. The definition keeps changing. For five years, the federal government, farm groups and environmentalists have sparred over how to protect the public from pollution by large-scale livestock operations known as Co...
Recent complaints about manure spraying - The state Department of Agriculture's most recent annual report said that overapplication of liquid manure to crop fields and poor record keeping continue to be a problem at many of the state's dairies. Overapplication is a possible source of nitrate cont...
But progress here has been virtually nonexistent - Melodie Selby was excited. A veteran water-quality engineer at the state Department of Ecology, Selby and others had been trying for years to get Yakima County commissioners interested in tackling groundwater contamination in the Lower Yakima Valley. Then...
Part 3: Others work together - OTHELLO -- It took dairyman Dwain Forester a year before deciding to join an unusual cooperative effort to combat nitrate contamination across the Mid-Columbia Basin. "I did not follow easily," said Forester, a plain-spoken bear of a man who runs a mediu...
It's time to fix deplorable groundwater conditions - "What we've got here is a failure to communicate!" -- From the 1967 movie "Cool Hand Luke" One disturbing conclusion to draw from this newspaper's recent series, "Hidden wells, dirty water" is that there is -- to put it mildly -- a glaring lack of dialogue...
About this project - ...