The testimony about the illnesses surfacing on the West Plains in the chambers of the Spokane County Board of Commissioners on October 29 would have been alarming had it not been preceded by two years of clean water advocacy by residents of the rural areas between Spokane and Airway Heights.
“My year started with a cancer diagnosis,” said Liz Goodwin-Oakes, who lives on the West Plains. “Two weeks later I … found out my well was contaminated with PFAS from the airport.”
She was referring to per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a family of water-repellant chemicals that occur in a vast array of products. Though no one person’s ailment can be traced with certainty to PFAS, they are increasingly thought to be linked to cancer and other diseases. (Read our extensive coverage of the West Plains PFAS crisis here.)
Goodwin-Oakes’ account is part of a constellation of similar reports from the West Plains: multiple cancer deaths among people, livestock and pets who drank from contaminated wells; concerns among well owners that they might share the same fate; and worries that residents might not be able to sell their homes with contaminated wells.
Those stories have continuously surfaced in local meetings since Spokane International Airport (SIA) disclosed in 2023 that it had known for six years that the chemicals had contaminated its test wells. The people who tell these stories want the county to act.
Now, for the first time in the seven years since “forever chemicals” were discovered in the groundwater in Airway Heights, Spokane County is considering moving toward getting people clean drinking water by creating a clean water task force that would find ways to do that. The Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) has been discussing the formation of the task force whose job, according to West Plains water activist John Hancock, will be to test private wells for the chemicals and install filters on those where contamination is found. Hancock founded and leads the West Plains Water Coalition.
“What do we do to start helping people?” Hancock said in an interview with RANGE. “That’s the main purpose of the coalition, is to get government action towards actually helping people.”
The county’s decision to consider creating the task force follows weeks of testimony at BOCC legislative meetings, during which West Plains residents continued to tell wrenching stories about their struggles with the contamination in their water.
Though the contours and exact mission of the task force are not established, French circulated a list of 27 potential candidates at a BOCC briefing session the morning before Goodwin-Oakes’s remarks. French ran his successful 2024 reelection campaign largely on solving the contamination.
The list is heavy with French allies, like Airway Heights City Council Member Hank Bynaker; Commissioner Josh Kerns, a fellow conservative on the BOCC; and Chris Pengra, the CEO of a local public development authority. It also lists Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown and City Council President Betsy Wilkerson, but it is light on people who live in the affected community.
French did not return a request for comment on this story.
Commissioner Chris Jordan, who requested initial conversations on the BOCC about creating such a task force, said the need was clear from the stories of people like Goodwin-Oakes. Jordan represents District 1 which covers parts of the city of Spokane east of the West Plains. Earlier in October, the county had identified a potential clean water grant from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), but later discovered that because of “fine print,” it might not be eligible, Jordan said.
“That was disappointing to learn,” Jordan told RANGE. “It spurred me to say, ‘Maybe we need a task force to bring together a variety of stakeholders who are engaged in this issue, including the county grants team, the West Plains Water Coalition (WPWC), the [Washington] Department of Ecology, the county, the health district and others.’ We may be able to better identify and vet funding opportunities through a group like this.”
Jordan said he has not given up on the EPA grant, but the need for the task force has become clear.
The French list
Of the 27 names on French’s list of candidates for the task force to address the crisis, Hancock is the only one who lives in the contaminated area, though his well water does not contain PFAS.
Hancock told RANGE in an interview November 25 that this is an unacceptable distribution of representation, saying the task force should have more West Plains residents — some of whom have been drinking contaminated water for decades. Citing a new state law requiring citizen input on projects that affect the environment, he said the county should build the task force with more of the affected community.
“Have citizens been involved in the formulation of this?” Hancock said. “Because they know things about your plan that you don’t know.”
After French distributed his list of task force candidates at the October 29 briefing session, other West Plains residents expressed concern about the proposed names.
“With all due respect to Mr. Kerns, having both commission representatives come from the longstanding political majority of the commission is ill advised,” said Craig Volosing, a rancher who lives in the Palisades and a vocal critic of the county’s inaction on PFAS, at the briefing session. “The protracted unfolding of this crisis has fostered a significant diminishment of trust and confidence in the role of county commissioner level involvement. … The other must be one of the minority.”
Volosing also noted other pollutants that are known to contaminate groundwater in the West Plains, saying the task force should pay attention to those contaminants, too.
“Please create not a PFAS task force but a water resources task force,” Volosing said
‘Deceived’
There are several ongoing efforts to bring clean water to residents with contaminated wells. Fairchild Air Force Base discovered pollutants in its groundwater in 2017, resulting from the seepage of firefighting foam that contained several forms of PFAS into surrounding aquifers from testing sites at the facility. Fairchild began subsidizing a program to pipe clean municipal water from Spokane to Airway Heights residents. Private well owners did not benefit from that program, so the base began trucking bottled water and offered to install PFAS filters on their wells within a certain geographic area. But PFAS has been found far outside Fairchild’s boundaries.
The airport (SIA) also discovered the chemicals in its groundwater that year but didn’t disclose the contamination even when state law changed in 2020 requiring it to do so. Ecology learned of the contamination from a citizen’s public records request in 2023 and is forcing SIA to clean it up through state-mandated procedures. Meanwhile, Ecology and the EPA are testing and providing filters to hundreds of well owners, but many are still without clean water and SIA does not provide any impacted residents with clean water.
West Plains residents say French — who has been on the airport board since long before the contamination was discovered and knew of it in 2017 — worked with other airport officials, including departing airport CEO Larry Krauter, to cover up the crisis in favor of economic development.
“The Fifth District has been deceived,” said West Plains resident Mary Benham at the October 29 legislative session. Her well is not contaminated, but Benham filed an unsuccessful motion to recall French last year.
“A task force should have been created seven years ago,” she said.
Editor’s note: this story has been corrected to say that Mary Benham’s well is not contaminated with PFAS.
