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Department of Ecology Press Release - October 10, 2005
05-250
SPOKANE - The Kaiser Aluminum Company has reached a legal settlement with the Department of Ecology (Ecology) over a $40,000 penalty Kaiser received for discharging PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) into the Spokane River from its facility at Trentwood.
The new settlement allows $30,000 of the total to be spent by Spokane County to drill more wells to help researchers study the interaction between the Rathdrum-Spokane aquifer and the Spokane River. Ecology will combine the remaining $10,000 of the original penalty with other penalties for future environmental projects in Washington.
Ecology fined Kaiser last November, and Kaiser appealed the penalty and an accompanying order so it could explore the possibility of using the penalty money for a local environmental project. The hearings board asked that Ecology and Kaiser meet to come to a settlement independently.
The accompanying order required Kaiser to find out where the PCBs are coming from and to stop the source. The company also was ordered to improve its system for reporting monitoring results and to increase monitoring if PCB levels rise again. Those requirements are still in place.
The $30,000 will be paid to Spokane County's division of utilities, which will build new monitoring wells and collect hydrogeologic information from existing wells near Sullivan Road and Plante's Ferry Park in the Spokane Valley.
Researchers from Ecology, the Idaho Department of Water Resources and the U.S. Geological Survey have been studying the bi-state aquifer for the past year and a half. The results of the study will give Idaho and Washington a scientifically-sound body of information on which to base future water-management decisions in the Spokane-Coeur d'Alene area.
"Using the money from a penalty to help the environment in the local area is always our preference," said René-Marc Mangin, who manages Ecology's Spokane office. "This way, the penalty for harming the river goes right back into protecting the same watershed."
In late 2002, Kaiser discharged PCBs into the Spokane River on at least four days. The amount discharged on the days monitored was greater than 1,000 times the amount of PCBs normally expected from the facility.
PCBs are a family of human-made, chlorinated chemical compounds that were once used in a variety of industrial and commercial applications. PCBs bind to the sediment that attaches to the walls of sewer pipes where it is released to the environment over time.
PCBs build up in the fatty tissues of the body and are a known carcinogen. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned commercial production of PCBs in 1979.
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Media contact: Jani Gilbert, public information manager, 509-329-3495; pager, 509-622-3073
Copyright © Washington State Department of Ecology. See http://www.ecy.wa.gov/copyright.html.
