Hey, it's Aaron. This week on the pod, we revisit two of our bigger investigations into the forever chemicals contamination on the West Plains. In the context of two big developments that dropped this week regarding that story. Listen in. We're focusing on two big developments in the saga of forever chemicals contamination on the West plains. First, the Spokane County PFAS Task Force, an advisory board comprised of local government officials and people whose drinking water wells contain per and polyflor alcohol substances. Held its first meeting near Medical Lake. It prioritized which homes should get filters that keep the chemicals out of drinking water. The chemicals got into the West Plains aquifers through firefighting drills conducted by Fairchild Air Force Base and Spokane International Airport using firefighting compounds that contained the chemicals. Which brings us to the other thing that happened. The State Department of Ecology identified two new liable parties in the contamination caused by SIA, the city of Spokane and Spokane County. Those two governments jointly owned the airport, and the airport's governing board knew when airport officials discovered the contamination in test wells in 2017. But the board members chose not to disclose that contamination to the public. Until now, the airport was financially responsible for the expensive and years long cleanup process mandated by state law. Ecology's decision may result in financial liability for the city and the county. Jeremy Schmidt, who it manages the cleanup site for ecology, told me that it's up to the three entities to work out among themselves. In any case, it comes as a relief. John Hancock is the founder of the West Plains Water Coalition, which has been advocating for PFAS solutions since 2022. I caught up with him after the task force meeting. The secrecy among these interconnected agencies that is Airport, county, and the city seems to have been legal, but it really pushed the boundaries of. Confidentiality, conflict of interest, executive session, and all those ways of avoiding talking about the issue. So it's like we're onto the next phase now of ecology, finding out, what really happened and naming the failures of stewardship that I think allowed the problem to be unknown for so long. Meanwhile, people in the neighborhood were drinking bad water unbeknownst. So, Ecology's focus on the science of PFAS. That is how much is where did it come from? Where's it going? Avoids all the historical finger pointing among everybody else and just focuses right on the solution. What do we do about it? And so it's really encouraging step to, push the whole process of knowing and solving forward together. With these developments in mind, we're bringing you two range stories separated into two acts that explain part of how the story developed. Here they are, act one. Our first story published in January of 2024. Details how former S-I-A-C-E-O, Larry Crowder and Commissioner Al French lobbied governments to allow the airport to continue using firefighting foam with PFAS as its active ingredient is titled. Airport, CEO says lawmakers should wait and see before banning toxic PFAS. For Spokane International Airport, CEO, Larry Crowder, there is no more important real estate in the world than the land around the airport's. Tarmax on the west Plains, which he is doggedly developing into a revenue generating economy, growing powerhouse that more than anything else, draws economic activity to Spokane, increasing the capacity of the local skies. And the goal is more air traffic, always more. Crowder is set up well for this, as he said in a May, 2023 interview on Spokane County TV with Al French, the county's longest serving commissioner. What might surprise people, Crowder said of SIA is that it's 6,400 acres in size. We've planned it well in order to have plenty of room to expand well into the future. Are there limits to the airport's development from an airfield perspective? No. Crowder told the spokesman in 2018. We have enough land to support a parallel runway. The only constraints parking and security would benefit from federal investment in increased capacity. That's why the expansion of Sias Terminal Sea then only conceptual, but now nearing completion is the largest expansion in the airport's history and one of the tallest feathers in crowder's, well decorated cap on the ground. Things are good at SIA. But what Crowder didn't mention in any interview was something that for six years has also been an object of his focus. The poison lurking beneath the surface. From 2017 when it first tested its well for so-called forever chemicals until August, 2023 SIA talked publicly only once in comments that got no traction in the news and may not have even reached the reporter it sent them to about the toxic chemical compounds it put into West Plains Groundwater as a result of federally required firefighting drills using aqueous film forming foam. AFS are the best known weapon for fighting petroleum-based fires, but the foam's active ingredients were several kinds of manmade compounds known as per and polyflor alcohol substances or PFS, which have been linked to cancer, birth defects, liver and kidney problems, and exist in many household products. After a regulatory change by the Washington Department of Ecology in 2021, requiring the disclosure of PFAS contamination, Crowder and SIA didn't disclose the west plains contamination even to ecology itself. DOE only learned about the airports contamination after a private citizen requested the records and sent them to the agency. And while Crowder and his colleagues weren't disclosing the contamination to the public, they also weren't ignoring forever chemicals. In fact, PFAS was a top priority for airport officials. They were actively lobbying to keep using them. Internal emails obtained by range through a public records request showed that in 2020 SIA concentrated its efforts on keeping the state of Washington from regulating the chemicals at airports. Airport officials sent letters threatening legal action to the legislature, which was considering legislation that would ban PFAS in a FF at airports, and in 2020 even flew to Washington DC in parts to meet with the FA a's top lawyer about that proposed legislation. Crowder and SIA spokesperson, Todd Woodard did not respond to a request for an interview. Amid drinking water crisis Fairchild volunteers as tribute as SIA, tried to stop the PFAS ban. People suffered. West Plains residents who did not know of CIA's contamination, had been concerned with severe sometimes deadly liver and kidney problems and cancer cases that seemed to be surfacing with alarming frequency. People were dying. It's important to note that public health agencies have not identified a cancer cluster on the West plains, and some data suggests there isn't one. Kara Costan, a spokesperson for the Washington Department of Health said the agency investigated kidney and pancreatic cancer rates on the west plains and could not identify a cancer cluster. Age adjusted rates of all cancer types combined with and pancreatic cancer were significantly lower in the West Plain study area compared to Spokane County and Washington State as a whole. While age adjusted rates of kidney cancer were not found to be significantly different within the study area compared to Spokane County and Washington State as a whole. Stanek wrote in response to questions from range. But that doesn't jive with what activists on the ground in the West Plains have documented in speaking with their neighbors. West Plain's Water Coalition founder John Hancock, who spent much of last year trying to produce better data about the contamination, says public officials have not looked where people diagnosed with cancer are getting their water. Crucial information to determine if there is a cancer cluster. In the United States, the baseline rate of pancreatic cancer hovers around seven cases per 100,000 people in our work together. Hancock said in an email to range referencing the W PWCs organizing with fewer than 1000 people. We have names of at least five neighbors who died of pancreatic cancer, all of whom drank contaminated well water. If those numbers are correct, pancreatic cancer is over 70 times more common on the west plains than the rest of the United States. Pancreatic cancer kills 90 to 95% of people diagnosed with the disease within five years, and is known to be caused by PFAS. Fairchild Airport space knew it had caused similar contamination from firefighting drills, identical to those that had occurred at SIA. In contrast to SIA, Fairchild told the Spokane Regional Health District about the potential health hazard in 2017 and published information about the contamination enabling the City of Airway Heights to buy clean municipal water from Spokane, which it does to this day. Fairchild established its own modest water program delivering bottled water, or installing expensive, but frequently malfunctioning carbon filters for some private well owners who don't benefit from the arrangement between airway heights and Spokane. Despite learning of their contamination. At approximately the same time, crowder and officials from SIA quietly allowed Fairchild to bear the public burden of PFAS contamination on its own. The airport was growing and for now it had dodged any fallout for its own pollution, almost telling on themselves. Just months after. Well, samples taken from the SIA campus in mid 2017 showed dangerously high levels of cancer causing chemicals. Crowder sent the airport board an email claiming SIA had divulged the test results to REM two news reporter Whitney Ward in June, 2017. We sampled four existing monitoring wells on airport property. Crowder said that the airport wrote to Ward in November of that year. The chemicals according to Crowder's email were detected at levels in three of the four wells at higher than the established screening levels. It's unclear from Crowder's email when these comments, which appear to have been copied and pasted from the email to the board, omitting any email change. Had been sent to Ward who had sent them or how they had been sent, but after a range forwarded her the message Ward said her lead investigative producer searched their email histories. Neither account Ward said, yielded the message. She said it was possible that the remarks went to a lower level producer who worked on that story at the time, and they were lost in the news shuffle. In any case. Ward said she never heard directly from Crowder or Woodard about the test results. These were the first and only publicly facing comments made by anyone at the airport on the PFAS situation until last August. I did not personally know about contamination in the groundwater at the airport until last month or so Ward said in an email to range this month. In fact, when I heard about it last month, I remember saying, what. No choice but to sue in the mid 2000 several prominent lawsuits over the toxicity of PFAS, which chemical manufacturers understood through their internal research, but for decades, hid from regulators were prompting bans on some PFAS products, including in Washington, which barred the use of a FF in firefighting drills. But the state continued to allow a FF at three kinds of places, oil refineries, manufacturing plants that make flammable liquids and airports like SIA, where the federal government required AF use in the firefighting drills. In December, 2019, representative Beth Delio, a democrat of Olympia sponsored legislation to eliminate those exemptions by requiring airports in the state to stop using a FF. One month later, Crowder told the House of Representatives that the airport industry could sue it if it passed Dole's proposal. Banning a Triple F with PF Os at airports would set a negative public policy precedent on the part of the state of Washington to improperly and unlawfully insert itself into areas of airport operations that are regulated by federal law. Crowder wrote in a January 17th, 2020 letter addressed to the House Environment and Energy Committee. He said the traveling public would be harmed by the inherent conflict between banning a love use at airports when the FAA requires it. Accordingly, if this legislation is enacted into law then airports would have no choice but to challenge its validity. In federal court Crowder wrote. Do. Leo had worked to regulate the chemical industry for decades. First, as an activist mother to an infant in the 1990s when she lobbied the state to regulate toxic chemicals used in many plastics that were appearing in women's breast milk. Now as chair of the Washington House Environment and Energy Committee do, Leo told Range. She was taken aback. By Crowder's opposition to a bill that had the support of firefighters who were one of the main constituencies lobbying to ban AF with PFAS because they work so closely with it. Dolia was not the committee chair when Crowder sent his letter. There was such clear bipartisan support for the move away from PFAS and firefighting foam at airport still, Leo said. And I think firefighters in particular were like, this is our livelihood. We are the ones who are on the front lines here. To have this kind of opposition just flies in the face of all the research and all the data and everything that we know. I guess the economic incentives of continuing to use PFAS outweighed the public safety angle. After he sent the opposition letter, Crowder immediately forwarded it to the entire airport board with a note that read. In part, I think the bottom line is that state legislators need to take a wait and see approach before proposing any laws related to airports regarding this matter. He's known and respected. If Crowder had concerns about the health implications of PFAS, he didn't express them publicly. Perhaps that's because focusing on the economic role of the airport has served Crowder well in an industry that prizes large development projects. He does it partly through a public development authority called S3 R three solutions, S3 R three Marshals, the resources of public and private service providers to recruit new and existing businesses into the West Plains Airport area, and drives economic prosperity through the creation of jobs according to its website. Crowder and French, the latter. A powerful man in many realms of Inland Northwest politics. Our vice chair and chair respectively of S3 R three people hire up the industry ladder, have noticed Crowder's work. In 2017, he was named the Airport Director of the Year by Airport Revenue News, a magazine about the airport business. The City of Spokane's website ran a story about Crowder's Accolade, quoting the magazine's publisher, Ramon Lowe. After speaking to many aviation executives about a worthy candidate, the name of Larry Crowder was consistently raised. Larry is highly respected within the aviation world with his efforts in advocating for the aviation industry in Washington, dc. Additionally, he has created air service at GE DIA's Identification, location identifier. And expects to soon undertake the redevelopment and expansion of GEG. The love kept flowing for Crowder in 2021, the American Association of Airport Executives, the largest advocacy group for crowder's profession in the world named Crowder. For a one year term, a post French bragged was the top of the ladder When he interviewed Crowder this spring, Crowder received another prize, AAA's Award for distinguished service. Crowder is famous across the state as a vocal airport booster, having testified on the need to beef up air travel infrastructure and written and oral comments before the state and federal legislatures. He's an extraordinarily well-respected leader out there. Bruce Beckett, a lobbyist who has represented airports at the Washington legislature told range. He's known and respected, and Crowder has helped win other legislative disputes for the airport industry, including testifying in the Washington Senate against a ban on the use of leaded gasoline at airports that was passed this year by the Washington House, but later killed in the Senate runaway plane. Crowder's diligence on airport business helps explain a theme and documents range reviewed for this story. He believes Washington State has no place regulating any airport activity that federal law touches. In September, 2020, he sent the airport board an email criticizing Governor j Endsley's proclamation requiring airports in Washington to comply with state public health requirements designed to blunt the COVID-19 pandemic. He likened those public health requirements to Delia's proposed PFAS law. We have witnessed behavior by the governor and legislature to substitute themselves to the federal government on a more frequent basis. The most significant example being the PFAS legislation passed this year that is preempted by the FAA Reauthorization Act Crowder wrote. I'm troubled by this trend and I think it will create even greater problems for us in terms of clouding the regulatory environment and potentially leading. To difficulties maintaining compliance with our FAA operating certificate. His legal logic in opposing the AF ban seemed simple enough because the federal government required the use of AF at federally regulated airports, that requirement would make it impossible to follow any state regulation banning the substance. This mirrored the sentiment of the rest of the airport industry in Washington. Beckett said. At the time the legislation was in the house, Beckett represented the Port of Moses Lake, which operates and develops the Grant County International Airport. That airport was also required by the FAA to stock A FF with PFAS in it. Beckett told Range, the Washington Airport Management Association and airport lobbyists, including Beckett, had the same concerns as Crowder about the bill and worked closely with Dolia to remedy them. So what representative do. Did instead of her original Bill Beckett said, is to say, once the FAA has tested and approved an alternative product that does not contain PFAS, then airports have a two year period in which to one gets supply and two, convert your equipment over to use that material. And if it's not available, there's a process for a third year. The result, the new PFAS law grew less stringent than an outright and immediate ban. With the workaround to address the conflict between state and federal regulations now in place. The house overwhelmingly passed the bill on February 16th, 2020. Spokane Democrats, Tim Ornsby and Marcus Elli and Spokane County Republican, Mike Bowles, joined 92 other bipartisan lawmakers in voting. Yes, former Spokane Valley representative Matt Shea, one of four legislators to vote no. All Republicans. After the bill was changed, Beckett said the Port of Moses Lake shifted its stance on the legislation from opposed to neutral because most airports remained troubled by the cost implications and the uncertainty of supply of any alternative foam approved by the F-A-A-S-I-A was expressly unsatisfied after the bill was amended according to a second distress signal, Woodard sent to FAA Chief Counsel Arjun Gar. SIA spokesperson, Woodard wrote to Garg on February 17th, the day after the bill cleared the house that the airport was now shifting its focus to the Senate, which was preparing to vote on its version of the bill. We are very concerned regarding the conflicted nature the proposed legislation would place us in between complying this with state and federal law simultaneously. Woodard's email to Garg Red. Two weeks later, Crowder Woodard and French traveled to Washington DC in part to meet with Garg about the legislation. They would be in town that week for congressional meetings and to attend an aviation legislative conference where wrote to guard. Gar confirmed a half hour slice of time on March 5th, 2020 when the Conference weary airport officials could visit his office. Crowder, Woodard, Garg and French did not return requests for comments about that meeting on the day of SIA officials meeting with Garg that Washington Senate passed its version of the bill 36 to 12 Spokane Democrat, Andy Billig voted yes, Inslee signed it into law on March 18th. Washington airports will eventually have to clean the tanks and firefighting equipment to prepare for new PFAS free firefighting foam. Beckett said this will be a big task. It's more complicated than just buying new chemical foam. He said The tanks, the trucks, the pumps all need to be intensively cleaned and it's extraordinarily expensive to do that. We're talking 30,000 to $40,000 per tank. It's not just changing the dishwasher's soap. Circling the wagons for three years after they met with Garg. SIA officials remained quiet about the contamination it had caused even after the State Department of Ecology classified PFAS as hazardous substances requiring people and organizations to report known spills of the Forever Chemicals beginning in 2021, explicitly including past releases like the contamination at SIA and Fairchild. Fairchild had already disclosed this contamination. Crowder and SIA chose not to disclose their own. And while Crowder did not return a request for comment reviews documents reviewed by range show, he was concerned about the fallout. Once the public was made aware in 2022, the airport received a public records request for documents showing the well test results. Crowder was so concerned about the request that he included it as a discussion item on the agendas for two executive committee meetings in 2022. The agenda item for the second meeting on June 1st concerned the airport's ground game as it braced for the public to react to the documents it read. Strategic Communications plan following release of PFAS documents in response to public records request. Whatever came of that plan, the airport has been forced to speak up, at least in writing since DOE deemed it liable for the cleanup last summer. CIA's few statements have sought to shift blame, downplayed the severity of the crisis, and avoided any in-person engagements with the affected public. The first communication was a dower August 7th, 2023. Letter to DOE, written by DC lawyer, Jeffrey Longworth. Who is representing SIA, Longworth accused the Department of lacking evidence to say the airport was responsible for the contamination, even though the agency was using CIA's own documents to do so. Longworth asked DOE to retract its accusation. Unnecessary and unfounded negative actions against the airport can damage its reputation and community role as well as harm the airport economically. He wrote. Ecology's investigation and arbitrary conclusions and public statements also have negative impacts that could have been avoided and should be avoided from this point forward. DOE reaffirmed his position in a further August 17th letter, forcing the airport to begin an environmental cleanup under Washington's Model, toxics Control Act. Writing in response to questions from the Seattle Times. Woodard emphasized that for at least some of the six years, the airport kept quiet about its well tests. It was not legally required to report them. In 2017, the Department of Ecology had not yet formulated mandatory reporting requirements for PFAS. He wrote there was no requirement to report in 2017 or 2019. The Times did not print any statement from Woodard addressing the requirement that bound the airport beginning in 2021 on December 9th, 2023. WPWC, founder Hancock, whose group is building data sets and maps that will tell private well owners whether they should worry about PFAS invited the airport to present at one of the coalition's. Public meetings declined saying the airport needed to be further along in the cleanup process before it could address the public. The sources and impacts of PFAS are a challenging and complex issue and part of an evolving national conversation given their reach and scope where to rot to Hancock. We are in the early stages of working with the Department of Ecology, the FAA and other state and federal agencies and experts to more completely understand the complex issue of PFAS on the West Plains. Therefore, at this time it's premature to engage in a meeting with West Plains Water Coalition. In the interim, please visit our website for any updates. Hancock read the email aloud at a recent informational meeting with dozens of West Plains residents who are worried their water is poisoned. The site referred to in Woodard's email links to a two-page document stating SAA will continue. Investigating PFAS related issues in a logical, data-driven manner, and described as spearheading the fight against PFAS contamination. Earlier this year, the FAA announced a transition plan to a florian free firefighting foam, and recently authorized its use According to the document, as a leader in the industry, the airport has taken immediate steps to authorize and purchase new PFOS free a FF. CIA's cleanup will likely take between 11 and 12 years. DOE officials told residents at WP WC meeting in December. Chuck Danner, who lives about two miles northeast of Fairchild, but outside the area of its water program was speaking with Dr. Catherine Carr. Carr is an epidemiologist in the School of Public Health at the University of Washington, and had just given a presentation at the meeting about how PFAS affects children. Danner 71 drinks from a private well, and told Carr he had recently had his blood tested for PFAS. The results, which Danner allowed range to read showed the presence of some kinds of PFAS at more than double the amount to be expected through normal exposure. He has not tested his well, but he can't imagine where else the PFAS in his blood came from. It's the same kind of PFAS used in a FA Well test costs between 350 and $400. I figure nothing's gonna happen through SIA or Fairchild anytime soon. Danner told Carr I need to stop drinking PFAS, but it's really difficult. Danner added for the last several years, I've had a filter on my refrigerator, but a technician told him that's a joke. After shopping around for months, he bought a Colligan water dispenser with his own money. Carr approved a Danner of Danner's purchase. That would be my best medical advice. Act two. In our second story, people with contaminated water are told their wells are safe to drink from. It's titled Community Demand Solutions as Fairchild reckons with new PFAS contamination rule. Not long after they moved into a trailer home on a secluded property in the ponder roses between Spokane and Airway Heights. In the early two thousands, Stephanie and Michael Martel stopped drinking their well water. Michael was having stomach pains. He couldn't fully explain though he had an idea of the cause he would claim over and over. This water is making me sick. Stephanie said speaking to range in their living room as Michael listened from his old recliner. They thought maybe high levels of phosphorus were causing Michael's ailment. The Mattel started hauling bottled drinking water into their home and had done so since, but they used well water for other things. I cooked with it and made coffee with it. Stephanie said they also grew fruit, trees, vegetables, and herbs. But then when we heard about the chemicals, I quit making coffee with it. They kept growing mint and basil. But not fruits and vegetables. In December, 2021, the Mattels received the first of what turned out to be quarterly letters from Fairchild Air Force Base. Fairchild lay upstream on Deep Creek, several miles southwest of their home. The letters informed the Mattels, the several forms of per and poly Fluora alcohol substances or PFAS had contaminated their well. The result of firefighting drills at Fairchild. Similar operations occurred at bases across the United States from the 1970s until 2022 when firefighters unaware of the toxicity drenched soils. With PFAS containing foam designed to extinguish jet fuel, blazes the chemicals then sank into the groundwater. PFAS is the umbrella term for a family of about 14,000 water resistance. Manmade compounds so persistent. They're known as forever chemicals. They are increasingly recognized to be associated with many health conditions to include elevated cholesterol levels, changes in response to vaccinations in some cancers. Former Spokane County Health Officer Bob Lus, told range last year, only a few of those compounds were used to manufacture the A FF, but those were considered among the most dangerous. When the base first contacted the motels, PFAS were considered emerging contaminants. The federal government had not set limits for PFAS in drinking water. Meanwhile, internal research by manufacturers dating to the 1970s linked PFAS exposure to health problems in animals and humans, but they hid that information from regulators. In 2017, the government was just catching up. Fairchild could only go by a health advisory issued by the Environmental Protection Agency. Essentially a guideline rather than a rule that non-regulatory agencies can use to respond to contamination. It is usually in place while the EPA finalizes formal limits for any specific contaminant. The level the EPA had identified for PFAS was 70 parts per trillion, about the same as three and a half water droplets in an Olympic size swimming pool. That's the metric Fairchild used to determine whether it owed the Mattel's clean water on May 6th, 2022. Fairchild wrote in a letter to the couple. Your sample results for PFAS are 57 parts per trillion. Comparing these values to the Environmental Protection Agency, lifetime health advisory level of 70 parts per trillion, the results indicate that your water is safe to drink. This level would not give them cancer or alter their organs. The letter implied in April, the EPA set a much lower health standard. This one, a legally enforceable maximum contaminant level per PFAS, four parts per trillion, which is close to the smallest amount that can be measured using current technology more than half of west Plain's wells. The EPA tested this spring exceed four parts per trillion. Fairchild will now have to retest wells to determine current levels and will likely start providing water to many more people through 2022 PFAS. Levels in the mattel's well increased fairchild sent a letter dated September 30th that recorded a level of 62.2 parts per trillion. Again, they were told Your water is safe to drink. A January 16th, 2023 Letter recorded 68.5 parts per trillion. Then came another letter reassuring the mattels. Your water is safe to drink On February 20th, 2023, the Air Force again tested the well resulting in a measurement of 75 parts per trillion. After that reading, the base would have to provide the mattels with clean water. A site inspector visited their home, but there were signs that a pipe was broken, so the mattels would have to fix that before the filter could be installed. I am bummed because I just shot myself in the foot. Stephanie told range, but the mattels don't care what the Air Force says or promises, and they didn't trust their well water in the first place. Then guess what? All of a sudden I'm filled with peace. Do you remember Choctaw Indians? My grandfather was a Choctaw Indian. They were the first tribe removed under the Indian Removal Act stephanie, who is also a member of the Choctaw Nation, said, and on the way from Mississippi to Oklahoma, in the middle of winter removal, they brought tainted blankets with smallpox and delivered. Spoiled meat. Stephanie said she didn't want the government taking care of her anyway. She felt like she had dodged a bad relationship. Saying, having been denied a filter was a blessing in disguise On June 5th, 2023. Fairchild tested again this time finding PFAS at 70 parts per trillion. Despite that, the mattels were told, your water is safe to drink. In December before the EPA codified the new limit range asked Fairchild if it thought 70 parts per trillion was a safe level for drinking. Fairchild Spokesperson, master Sergeant Jonathan Lovelady responded via email. The Air Force follows DOD policy to provide alternate drinking water. US EPA sets water quality standards and the Air Force adheres to them. The rules requiring use of PFOS lead and aqueous film forming foam. Are no longer in place, but only after decades of drills using huge amounts of a FF, sometimes filling entire hangar hangar base with a foam. John Wel is the civilian co-chair of Fairchild's Restoration Advisory Board, a joint body of Air Force personnel and residence that provides a forum for the public to engage with the Air Force Civil Engineer Center, or A-F-C-E-C, which administers environmental cleanups for the Air Force. He said the PFAS issue echoes environmental crises of the past. As regulators realized the toxicity of certain products after widespread damage had already occurred. That's what the EPA told everybody to do. Welch said in an interview, that's what we knew at the time. It's kind of like when we thought that asbestos was okay at two fibers per cubic centimeter. Now it's only safe at 0.5. The E P'S new limit on PFAS is one in a series of developments across the country that have raised national awareness of the chemicals, prompting new urgency among regulators. States know they must invest in cleanup. Journalists are examining the extent to which manufacturers hid the dangerous of PFAS. Organizations like the National PFAS Project Lab are advancing programs to promote awareness and solutions. In response, water, utilities and corporations with a stake in PFAS manufacturing are suing over new regulations. In this context, Fairchild like Air Force bases across the country is feeling pressure to move faster, plotting toward cleanup the crisis on the West plains. It blew up in the local news in 2017, after discovering PFAS and Airway Heights drinking Water, Fairchild alerted the city and a Spokane Regional Health District. Soon after, Spokane lawyers filed a class action lawsuit in federal court against the base alleging it used HFF. The base knew it would have to clean up the mess, but first it would have to do remedial investigation to map the contamination. Progress is slow. Seven years later, research is still ongoing and it will likely be years before it has a solid plan for a cleanup. Meanwhile, Fairchild subsidizes a program in Airway Heights to pipe municipal water from Spokane to more than 8,000 residents. Private well owners were left out of this solution, so the Air Force began installing filters on wells with PFAS levels above 70 parts per trillion, or delivering bottled water to the owners. At the February 7th RAB meeting, mark Lauch, a civil engineer who oversees contamination responses at four Air Force bases across the west, including Fairchild detailed the progress in a PowerPoint presentation on its filter program. 90 filters had been installed, four others had been connected to municipal water. Two filter installations were in the works. Two well owners had refused to sign the contract. Another was no longer in communication with the Air Force. Two others had site conditions prohibiting installation of a system. Hundreds of wells are still contaminated. Pointing fingers. West Plain's groundwater flows easily carrying PFOS with it along underground paleo channels, scrubbed between basalt ridges by the Missoula floods thousands of years ago. The base assumed its contamination was confined to two paleo channels underneath it. Hayford Road runs roughly along the eastern shore of the Eastern most Paleo channel. So Fairchild used it as a boundary for testing that meant many wells located between Hayford and Deep Creek, including the motels, were eligible for its water program. Well owners east of Payford, including hundreds who have found PFAS in their wells, were out of luck. A love lady suggested contamination beyond Hayford was caused by Spokane International Airport. He is right as Fairchild was learning of its contamination. SIA also found PFAS in its wells from similar firefighting training. In contrast with Fairchild, S-I-A-C-E-O, Larry Crowder did not disclose the airport's contamination until the airport was legally forced to do so in 2023 via a citizens' public records request. The citizen gave the results to the Washington Department of Ecology in the spring of 2023. During the time he was silent about the contamination, Crowder lobbied lawmakers to allow airports to continue using P-F-A-S-A-F-F. Ecology is forcing SIA to clean up its contamination through a state remediation law. Fairchild Air Force Base does not include the SIA site within its investigation. Love lady wrote in an email, Chad Pritchard, an Eastern Washington University geologist, has studied West Plains Hydrology for years. Most recently using a state grant to monitor PFAS in wells in a much larger area than Fairchild's testing zone, going as far east as the Palisades along the Spokane River. He said Paleo channels are not the only conduits for PFAS. The other pathways besides paleo channels would be people that have drilled wells that have no lining in them. Those would also help communicate water. Prichard said, any of the groundwater that's in the basement or the lower basalt rock are all intra communicating. Some of these factors potentially let contamination move farther east outside of its testing area. In an interview with Range LA said, the Air Force knows it may have to test wells outside the established service area, mentioning an area north of Fairchild that may be contaminated. We know that we're going to have to look there. He said, filter rules. Some people serve by fairchild's. Bottled water deliveries or carbon filters are also unhappy. Marcy Za Brisky lives down the road from the Mattels in 2021 when her husband, Larry, was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. She didn't know about the contamination in her. Well, his cancer was so involved at that point. She said it was up in his throat, both sides of his neck here, and the whole body of the pancreas was cancer. And then the main veins around it were ENC case in cancer. His adrenal glands had cancer that pushes through your whole body. Sitting at her dining table, she pulled out a document dated February 1st, 2022, six months after he passed away. I got that letter in the mail with a pamphlet on PFAS and I'm like, why did you send me this? Sam Brisky said her mother, Shirley Morgan, died not long after of a rare form of breast cancer. Two of her five boxers also died of cancer. Za Brisky worries that vegetables. She grew using water from her well and fed to her grandchildren are causing them health problems. Fairchild offered to install a granulated carbon filter on her well, but it requires her to sign a contract with conditions she does not want to accept, including notifying the Air force if someone else moves onto her property. Fairchild brings her 15 three and a half gallon bottles of water that feed into a dispenser every other Wednesday. She wants to sell her home and move, but doesn't see how that will be possible with contamination. What am I going to say? She said house for sale. Toxic water. 183.5 parts per trillion. No one's gonna wanna buy this house. Months to ink Contracts for some fairchild's actions are agonizingly slow. The base hosted a listening session on April 24th at the Elta Shriner Center. Two weeks after the EPA had codified the new maximum contaminate level. During a q and a, a woman who said her well feeds dozens of west Plains homes pointed out that EPA had announced it would create the new level. Months before that meeting, she said Fairchild should have been ready to start installing filters immediately. You should have had plans in place on April 11th to start distributing drinking water, to start testing additional wells to start handing out faucet filtration systems. The woman said, it's so frustrating at this point. I didn't cause this. The Air Force did. When are you going to do something? LA who's part of a panel of RAB and Air Force officials responded. There is a program being put together. I wish I could say it was ready to go right now. It's been seven years. The woman said. This didn't happen last week. We have so many people who've lost their entire livelihoods. Laos called on his boss, Robbie Ravi Chandran, the lead PFOS response Official for the Air Force's Civil Engineers. Ravi Chandran got up from his folding chair in a corner of the auditorium and explains to the woman that the problem was bigger than Fairchild. Hundreds of Air Force bases had caused similar contamination, and its remediation. Could not happen at every base all at once. We cannot install a system at every place all at the same time. Ravi said we'd like to prioritize based on concentration. Highest concentration gets treated first. He said it would be months before the Air Force could contract with private companies to install new filters around Fairchild. Even then, Fairchild would have to retest the wells for current PAS levels. So it's not that we haven't done anything, Rob Shandra said, but we cannot spend a dollar until the new maximum contaminant level becomes final. After the level is codified, it takes time to mint contracts and get filter programs off the ground. The woman was not satisfied. It's been 14 days since the new MCL went into effect. She said You've had data as far as hundreds of wells in our area alone that are below the 70, but above the four. How many filtration systems have you installed in the last 14 days? This is people's lives, systemic limitations. Fairchild is in the business of sending military planes into the sky, not providing water to its neighbors. Its leadership is constantly in flux with a commanding officer who changes every two years, which is how military commands across the country rotate their commanders. The commander is there for the mission of the base at John Hancock, a West Plains resident and water activist. And that doesn't include the neighbors, that's talking of the world, saving the world. So the local frustrations and dangers and our affronts are not very important. Like any military base, Fairchild is bound by strictures, dictated by the Department of Defense at a, a tangle of other federal agencies that restrict its ability to respond to the environmental crises it might cause or contribute to. The Air Force has a narrow scope of authority on when and what types of actions can be taken regarding PFAS. Love Lady wrote. This has been communicated through the rep to enhance awareness of this fact. Fairchild follows an environmental contamination management manual requiring all bases to clean up in a way that doesn't interfere with operations. They must ensure an uninterrupted access to the air, land, and water assets needed to conduct the AAF mission, the manuals introduction says, but all these limitations are cold. Comfort to a community that has poison in its water and feels iced out by the bureaucracy. In late 2022, Hancock founded the West Plains Water Coalition, which advocates for solutions to the PFAS crisis in the region. The organization holds frequent informational meetings at the Hub in Airway Heights, inviting speakers from the Washington Department of Health, E-P-A-E-W-U, the Spokane County Board of Commissioners, SRHD, and other organizations. At the most recent meeting on June 3rd, Hancock said he invited Fairchild and SIA to speak. Fairchild declined. SIA didn't respond. He said, Fairchild doesn't exert a stronger presence in the community, partly because A-F-C-E-C, the Air Force civil engineer arm that responds to environmental crises and does not do public relations as part of its mission is administering the water program. It's all gravel and water and pumps and tests. Hancock said it's not a human services organization as I think it should be. These are humans with trouble. Asked whether Fairchild feels like it's part of the local community. Love lady wrote in an email to range, certainly he noted 1400 airmen and 5,000 family members live on base and in the surrounding area. Protecting the health of our personnel, their families, and the communities in which we serve is a priority for the Department of Air Force. He wrote, Fairchild Air Force Base takes great pride in being part of the INW community. Those are our two acts for the week. More information about the PFAS crisis on the West Plains, and the various government responses to it is available@rangemedia.co. That's our time for this week. Free Range is a weekly news and public affairs program presented by Range Media and produced by Range Media and KYRS Community Radio, KYRS, medical Lake Spokane.