(Art by Valerie Osier)
The Washington State Department of Ecology has declared that both the city of Spokane and Spokane County are on the hook for cleaning up the toxic “forever chemicals” contamination stemming from firefighting drills at the Spokane International Airport (SIA).
The state in 2023 had named SIA as responsible for cleaning up the PFAS contamination that had leached from its tarmacs into local groundwater for hundreds of homes on the West Plains.
The two local governments own the airport, which is overseen by a governing board partly made up of top city and county officials.
The August 27 announcement is a key moment of accountability in a pollution saga characterized by blame-casting among local, state and federal agencies, which clean water activists say has impeded solutions to the crisis. It also protects access to additional funding and resources the county and city have access to that the airport doesn’t.
“I’m happy,” said water activist and West Plains resident John Hancock. Hancock founded the West Plains Water Coalition, a group of West Plains residents, many of whom own drinking water wells contaminated with PFAS, in late 2022 to draw attention to the crisis.
“Ecology’s focus on the science of PFAS — that is, how much is there? Where did it come from? Where’s it going? — avoids all the historical fingerpointing among everybody else and focuses right on the solution,” he told RANGE. “It’s a really encouraging step to push the whole process of knowing and solving forward together.”
Nick Acklam, the toxics cleanup manager for Ecology’s Eastern Washington Region, sent a letter to each government on August 21 notifying them of the decision.
The chemicals, which belong to a family of synthetic water-resistant compounds called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), got into West Plains aquifers through firefighting drills conducted by SIA and Fairchild Air Force Base. Both airports washed firefighting compounds that contain PFAS into the loose soil during those drills, and they seeped into the groundwater.
Those activities were mandated by the federal government before it was publicly known that the chemicals potentially cause cancers and other deadly diseases. PFAS are contained in a huge array of household and commercial products because they repel water better than pretty much any mass-produced chemical. But because of this, they are frustratingly persistent and last a long time in the human body.
West Plains well owners who had unknowingly consumed the PFAS-laden groundwater have reported developing and dying from various forms of cancer and other severe health problems.
Both SIA and Fairchild are replacing their firefighting compounds with PFAS-free versions, after Washington state banned their use in 2020.
SIA is currently mapping and monitoring its contamination — an arduous and expensive prelude to cleaning it up — according to a process established under the state Model Toxics Control Act (MTCA). The cleanup will likely take more than a decade.
City spokesperson Erin Hut told RANGE the primary responsibility for the cleanup lies with the airport.
Though Ecology’s determination that the county and city are liable for the contamination is legally binding, Jeremy Schmidt, who manages the cleanup site for the department, said the three liable parties will have to work out the details among themselves.
He said it was an important step to name the governments as additional liable parties because they have access to resources the airport doesn’t.
“If and when offsite impacts from the airport are confirmed, the city and county sit in a particularly good position to assist with addressing those impacts,” Schmidt told RANGE. “The city has drinking water infrastructure within potential areas of concern. The county has funding from the legislature to address PFAS in the West Plains. So we see them as critical partners.”
Spokane County recently secured $7.5 million from the state legislature to install PFAS filters in the homes of West Plains residents whose wells are contaminated. That figure is less than half of what it anticipates a complete filter program will cost, County Commissioner Al French told attendees Wednesday at the inaugural meeting of the Spokane County PFAS Task Force (PTF), which will advise local governments on the cleanup.
Pushback
Before Acklam’s final letter, each government had an opportunity to give Ecology feedback about being named; both responded with complaints about its decision.
Find all correspondence between Ecology and the city of Spokane and Spokane County, among other documents related to SIA cleanup here.
Spokane City Administrator Alexander Scott wrote back to Acklam on July 29 saying the city would cooperate with Ecology but expressed a measure of skepticism that the airport was responsible for all the PFAS contamination at the site in the first place.
“The city is concerned that Ecology does not yet have a complete understanding of the source(s) of PFAS in groundwater in and around SIA,” Scott wrote.
After Ecology first named SIA as responsible for the cleanup, airport officials and County Commissioner Al French expressed the same uncertainty that SIA had caused the contamination. French has held a seat on the Airport Board for a decade and is a vocal supporter of the airport’s development efforts. Asked to comment on this story at the PTF meeting Wednesday, French said, “I’m only interested in telling the truth” and turned his back on a RANGE reporter.
Scott asked Acklam to request information from the Washington Military Department (WMD) about its own firefighting training on SIA tarmacs in 1992 and to notify WMD about the potential that it, too, could be named as a liable party.
In September 2024, the environmental consulting firm GSI International issued a report commissioned by SIA saying the contamination likely stemmed from the airport’s firefighting training operations.
Michael Folsom, Spokane County’s legal council, responded to Acklam with “surprise,” saying the county could not be held responsible for the cleanup because the manufacturers of the firefighting compound had not disclosed to the public that PFAS was toxic.
“While the county seeks to fulfill its potential responsibilities related to the SIA site, it was surprised to receive Ecology’s letter for several reasons,” Folsom wrote in a July 15 letter.
Those reasons:
- Ecology had already identified the airport as a liable party
- SIA was cooperating with the state-mandated cleanup
- SIA is governed by the Airport Board (which is partly made up of top city and county officials), and
- Ecology’s own guidance asks site managers to identify liable parties “before entering into negotiations of” a cleanup order, which the department issued to SIA two years ago
Folsom noted the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) required the airport to use the chemicals in its firefighting training, saying the county was not responsible for the pollution.
Acklam responded to Folsom’s concerns in his August 21 letter saying, “The process set out in that document is not the only approach to PLP [potentially liable person] naming. Ecology has determined that naming additional PLPs now will facilitate cleanup of this contaminated site.”
Spokane County spokesperson Pat Bell did not immediately respond to questions about whether the county wants to challenge Ecology’s decision.
Like Spokane City Administrator Scott did regarding WMD, Folsom asked Acklam to also name Fairchild as a liable party for the SIA cleanup.
Fairchild had also contaminated some West Plains aquifers with the same chemicals in similar firefighting drills, and the Air Force is managing its own cleanup of that site — which lies about two miles from SIA — under federal law. When Fairchild found its contamination in 2017, it immediately told local governments about it and created a modest water provision program for some of the affected areas.
By contrast, when SIA discovered its own contamination the same year, it kept that information from the public for years until it was forced to disclose its well test result after a community activist requested them in 2022.
Scott’s and Folsom’s pushback repeats history: when Ecology initially said SIA must clean up the contamination in 2023, the airport hired Washington DC lawyer Jeffrey Longsworth, who penned a letter demanding Ecology retract its decision. When Ecology refused, the airport continued trying to thwart its enforcement, saying the FAA didn’t allow it to spend revenue on environmental cleanups. The Spokesman’s Amanda Sullender reported that wasn’t necessarily true: the FAA had given the airport its blessing to comply with the cleanup order.
Acklam noted in his letters that if the liable parties don’t cooperate with Ecology, the agency can levy a $25,000 fine for every day of noncompliance.
COMING PFAS DEVELOPMENTS: The next PFAS Task Force meeting is tentatively scheduled for September 17 at the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office Regional Training Center in Medical Lake.
Additionally, Spokane County may put a measure on ballots for the August 2026 election that would create a protection district for groundwater under the West Plains. Similar to the Spokane Valley Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer Protection District, which was first established in 1985, the measure would add a small fee to property taxes in the district to allow local governments to monitor and address contamination.
Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to say the city said the airport is primarily responsible for the PFAS cleanup.
