Ecology seeks comments on Ephrata landfill
Documents guide cleanup of groundwater contamination
EPHRATA - The state's Department of Ecology invites the public to review three documents guiding cleanup of groundwater contamination at the Ephrata Landfill.
Several chemicals are found in groundwater in three of the aquifers lying under the landfill, including non-methane organic compounds, metals and petroleum products. The concentration of some of the chemicals exceeds state groundwater standards.
"Right now the impact to the public is pretty much nonexistent, and that's the way we want to keep it," explained department Senior Hydrogeologist Cole Carter. "There are some buried drums we think contain some chemicals that we've seen in some of the near-surface aquifers, and we don't want these to get into the deeper drinking water aquifers people have their wells at. So what we want do is have those drums removed and minimize the risk to the public."
Similar cleanups have occurred before, but Carter said this is fairly large for Eastern Washington.
The public comment period began Thursday, and runs through Jan. 27.
The documents for public review and comment include a draft agreed order for an interim remedial action plan, a remedial investigation and feasibility study and a state environmental policy act determination of non-significance.
Grant County and the City of Ephrata are potentially liable persons for the site. The entities are working with the department to clean up the site and have negotiated the draft agreed order. An agreed order is a legally binding document requiring specific clean-up actions to protect human health and the environment. The actions are outlined in an interim remedial action plan.
"This is not something new," said Derek Pohle, director of Grant County Public Works. The county and the state have been monitoring and preparing for the cleanup since the late 1980s, he added. "This is not being mandated, this is a set of voluntary actions by the county and the city to deal with issues that need to be dealt with."
According to the agreed order prepared by the department, the site was added to the Environmental Protection Agency list of potential hazardous sites in 1979, and the department completed a phase one site investigation in 1987. In 1990, the department ranked the site and put it on the hazardous sites list, ranked 5 on a scale of 1 to 5, with a score of 1 representing the highest level of concern and 5 the lowest.
Actions include exploring for buried drums which may be contributing to contamination, sampling contents of the drums, removing drums, placing a protective cap over the area and treating and disposing of contaminated groundwater. Clean-up activities are scheduled to begin after the 30-day comment period and within a month and a half of finalization of the agreed order.
The agreed order requires the potentially liable persons to conduct the investigation and study to determine where and how much contamination is at the site, and to evaluate information for clean-up activities.
Pohle said some of the work is done, and should continue for several years.
Cleanup activities are focused on about 40 acres of the original landfill site, which does not include a synthetic lining, he said. The newer facilities of the site are on a modern, lined landfill and have not been impacted.
Pohle said the groundwater tables fluctuate with the introduction of irrigation water every year, and is one of the issues to be dealt with.
"The city and the county are both cooperative and working to do what's best for the people that live around there," Carter said.
For more information, contact Carter at 509-329-3609 or via e-mail at coca461@ecy.wa.gov.