Department of Ecology News Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - Dec. 17, 1998

98-215

Contact: Joye Redfield-Wilder, public information manager, (509) 575-2610

Soil removal wraps up, monitoring continues near Grandview

YAKIMA -- Work to excavate soil contaminated with high levels of the herbicide dinoseb should wrap up soon near Grandview. Crews will begin to fill with clean soil and gravel an excavation pit nearly half the size of a football field at a former hop operation where pesticides were mixed and stored.

Meanwhile, nearby residential wells and groundwater monitoring wells are being tested once a month for the contaminant to ensure drinking-water supplies are safe, said Tom Mackie, site manager for the Washington State Department of Ecology.

"More monitoring wells are being put in and real progress is being made to monitor the polluted aquifer," Mackie noted. "By the end of January we should have the data needed to tell us how deep and how far the ground-water contamination has spread and if we need to treat it."

Since early November, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) contractors have dug up 8,375 tons of soil contaminated with dinoseb from the site on King Tull Road two miles east of Grandview in Benton County. A pit from 2- to 14-feet-deep and 100 feet wide by 200 feet long remains to be filled with clean material, said Beth Sheldrake, EPA onsite coordinator. Some of the soil now stored under cover will be treated on site and used to fill the pit, she said. The rest will be trucked to an approved disposal facility.

Using its authority under the federal Superfund law, EPA agreed to remove contaminated soil after state and local officials became concerned soil removal was moving too slowly under the direction of the landowner.

Former hop farmer Dan Alexander remains under an emergency order with the Washington State Department of Ecology to monitor the groundwater and clean up the contamination. Installation of six new monitoring wells along with computer modeling should help investigators determine the edge of the contaminated groundwater plume, said Mackie.

In addition to the six new monitoring wells, 12 monitoring wells have been put in place by the landowner since clean up work began at the site last summer.

Early last spring, state and local officials were prompted to test more than 100 wells in the vicinity when two wells were identified with levels of dinoseb 50 times greater than allowed by federal drinking-water standards. Later, water and soil samples confirmed the former hop processing plant was the source of the contamination.

Dinoseb was a commonly used agricultural herbicide until its ban in 1986 due to health concerns by the EPA.