Action on Lower Valley water contamination seen as overdue

GRANGER, Wash. -- Federal regulators announced plans Wednesday to begin enforcing water-quality laws in the Lower Yakima Valley where there has been widespread and long-standing contamination of groundwater used for drinking by private well owners.

The inspections would be unannounced visits to large dairies, feedlots and other operations suspected of unlawfully discharging pollutants into surface and ground-
water, said Thomas Eaton, state operations director for the Environ-mental Protection Agency's regional office in Seattle.

The announcement came at a public meeting held to discuss the results of a report compiled over the last 10 months by EPA and several state agencies regarding the Lower Valley problem, first documented in a series of stories a year ago in the Yakima Herald-Republic.

The EPA will also begin sampling well water early next year in an effort to identify the sources of nitrate and bacterial pollution, which many well owners believe is chiefly caused by the application of dairy manure and commercial fertilizer to crops. Manure and fertilizer are rich in nitrates.

Many of the 55 people at the meeting said identification of the source of the pollution and enforcement against the culprits is long overdue.

"Is this not just another endless report restating the same issues? The answer is yes," said Louie Aguilar of Toppenish.

Maurice Rosen of Grandview said sampling to determine the source is a straightforward process. "It isn't rocket science anymore. We can find out whether it's human, animal or fertilizer," Rosen said.

Jan Whitefoot of Harrah, who participated in the EPA-led study but has been critical of the process, said the Yakima Valley is becoming "the toilet bowl" of the state.

"We don't have another 30 years to stand around and destroy what we have here in the Yakima Valley," Whitefoot said.

During a break in the meeting, participants were asked to put colored sticky notes next to their preferred method for addressing the problem. The options had been pasted on the walls of a conference at Radio KDNA, where the meeting was held. The "enforcement" option drew the largest number of sticky notes.

That prompted Eaton to say the message had gotten through.

"We get the message that people believe we should be emphasizing enforcement a lot more than we are," he said.

Marlene White, a member of the Yakama Nation, wondered why the groundwater problem hasn't received the same kind of government attention and money as the recent landslide on State Route 410, which isolated the community of Nile. The federal government will spend $1 million to speed up construction of a new road to get commerce flowing again in that valley.

"Water is underground and you can't see it," White said. "The landslide you can see so it gets money. But clean water is a basic need. If we can't assist people in getting that basic necessity, we are failing."

Adam Dolsen, whose family owns the Cow Palace dairy in Granger and a feedlot in Harrah, didn't publicly speak at the meeting but said afterward that their operations welcome enforcement.

"We have nothing to hide. We're one of the most heavily regulated industries in the world, and we follow those regulations to the T," Dolsen said.

Rep. Bruce Chandler, R-Granger, also attended the meeting. He said later that he favors a program to replace shallow wells with deeper wells or small regulated water systems where practical.

"Expanded and aggressive enforcement isn't going to get good drinking water for people," Chandler said. "Folks hate an industry, but if any effort focuses on attacking an industry, nobody's going to be better off."

EPA's enforcement announcement is part of a national effort announced earlier this month by EPA administrator Lisa Jackson.

In a speech, Jackson singled out large concen-trated animal feeding operations as one of the biggest threats posed to clean water.

* Leah Beth Ward can be reached at 509-577-7626 or lward@yakimaherald.com.