Airway Heights water safe to drink, officials say.
Airway Heights officials said Thursday that the city’s water supply is now safe to drink.
Since the discovery of the high levels of contamination, the city began to flush its pipes with Spokane water.
But it took three weeks for enough of Spokane’s water to clean out the system to levels considered safe to drink.
Any water restriction must be approved by the City Council and would likely mean establishing an odd-even day watering schedule.
Although Spokane can pull as much water as needed from the aquifer, Anderson said how much Airway Heights can receive is limited by the connections to Spokane’s water system.
Or, they could tap into a Fairchild Air Force Base water line that runs through the city of Airway Heights.
“And I don’t blame them.” Wolffy’s Hamburgers owner Justin Davis also said his business was down significantly.
“The biggest thing is the customers are scared,” he said.
At first the city provided restaurants with potable water, Anderson said.

Stuart replaced wells after EPA found too much PFOS and PFOA in drinking water.
In 2016, when the EPA recognized the chemicals’ dangers and lowered acceptable PFOS levels by 65 percent, the city closed and later replaced the wells that were contaminating the water supply to all customers, city spokesman Ben Hogarth said.
Cleaning the water Stuart’s levels meet today’s EPA standards, as they did before 2016, but they’re still higher what many experts consider safe.
Heightened exposure can cause cancer, liver damage, low birth weight and a weakened immune system, according to the EPA.
The only safe level is 1 part per trillion, said Bill Walker, an Environmental Working Group senior scientist.
That’s analogous to one square inch in 250 square miles.
The city also has allocated $600,000 in the 2017-18 proposed budget for additional water treatment that would remove these chemicals, Peters said.
Some experts caution individuals against relying on such filters, however.
"We think this is an issue that needs to be addressed on a community level, and it shouldn’t be down to the individual homeowner to remove these types of chemicals," said Andrews, the Environmental Working Group senior scientist.
Their health effects are unknown, and they’re not as easy to remove from water as PFOS and PFOA, said Phil Brown, a Northeastern University professor who co-authored a study with the Environmental Working Group on PFOS and PFOA levels in drinking water throughout the U.S. More studies Stuart’s previously high levels were cited in that study, released Thursday.

Drinking water here is safe but has dissolved minerals that are tough on plumbing, state and local officials said Thursday at a meeting with some of the 130 utility customers who raised concerns this winter about water quality.
Water from Valley’s two well fields has been hard since the day the 133-year-old utility first tapped into those sources.
Several said the water coming out of their taps is cloudy, has an off- taste and smells.
The residents said they buy and drink bottled water.
Keith Merwin of Shuttlemeadow Road said people are sick of spending money for replacement appliances and for bottled water to drink.
"It’s frustrating to hear people say that they can’t drink the water," Lori Mathieu, chief of the state health department drinking water section, said.
"I’ve lived her all my life and the water has always been hard," she said.
Options could include new treatment equipment to remove dissolved minerals from raw well water or purchase of soft surface waters from nearby water utilities to dilute Valley’s harder water.
The company will explore options to reduce levels of dissolved minerals and tell customers the findings and what the cost will be.
This particular issue would be outside the normal supervision of state utility regulators who usually set rates, Vaughn said.

An informational meeting about water pollution in Washington County was swamped with questions for state officials Tuesday evening. Another meeting is scheduled for Wednesday. “I don’t like it,” said Bridget Shore, holding her baby boy at the Oak-Land Junior High School meeting in Lake Elmo. “There are a lot of young families around here.” A group of about 70 people gathered to learn about chemicals in their water that were manufactured by the 3M Co. Officials have said that the chemicals are particularly worrisome for fetuses, babies and breast-feeing mothers. Traces of the chemicals — called perfluorochemicals, or PFCs — were discovered in the drinking water of about 65,000 Washington County residents in 2004. The chemicals apparently had leached into the water from waste dumps, where the company disposed of the chemicals, ending in the 1970s. The meeting was hosted by the state’s Department of Health and Pollution Control Agency. Until recently, the urgency of issue of PFCs in water had been fading. 3M stopped making the chemicals in 2002, and since then the levels in fish, river water and people…

Dairy Creek Golf Course is low on water, but SLO County says let it go brown.
“It is hard for me to justify taking water for drinking and using it for pleasure when people have wells that go dry,” said Supervisor Lynn Compton, who voted alongside supervisors Bruce Gibson and Adam Hill against using potable water to supplement irrigation at the 20-year-old course in El Chorro Regional Park.
The golf course is operating with limited water and isn’t due additional deliveries until Dec. 1.
Parks and Recreation Director Nick Franco said for now he will continue to water all 18 holes, at a limited capacity, as he attempts to negotiate with the state to gain access to water that is currently promised to the California Men’s Colony, a state prison.
Existing facilities include a dog park, trails, a botanical garden, campground and ball fields, in addition to the golf course.
It includes potential added activities, such as a mountain bike skills course and disc golf area.
Faced with a decreasing water supply and steadily declining revenues, the board hired a consultant to develop a long-term plan for the park that would help pay off the bond debt for the golf course, which remains around $5 million.
Supervisors Debbie Arnold and John Peschong both voted to use potable water from either Cal Poly or Whale Rock at costs that ranged between $1,000 and $2,000 per acre-foot, arguing that the course will generate more revenue with an irrigated 18 holes.
If the parks director is able to negotiate additional water from the state from a nearby well, he will take the decision to the board to make a final decision about how much of the course will go brown this year.
Monica Vaughan: 805-781-7930, @MonicaLVaughan Declining business at Dairy Creek At Dairy Creek Golf Course’s high point, there were 62,000 rounds of golf played in one year.

Records Show Hundreds of Wells Could Leak CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas— Citing new records showing the potential for drinking water contamination around Corpus Christi, the Center for Biological Diversity today supplemented its legal protest to a federal oil and gas lease sale planned for Thursday.
The leases would allow fracking within and near several Texas reservoirs and dams that supply drinking water to Corpus Christi and other cities.
Since its original protest was filed, the Center has obtained records showing that old plugged wells are leaking into the Choke Canyon reservoir.
More than 100 active oil wells and seven gas wells are within the reservoir — many within 2 miles of lease-sale parcels.
There are four leaking wells at Choke Canyon and hundreds of existing wells at Choke Canyon, Lake Somerville and Lake Texana that could potentially leak, according to public records.
If new wells are drilled on new federal leases, more high-pressure fracking could push chemical-laden fluid into old wells, contaminating water supplies if the old wells leak.
The Center’s protest cites the BLM’s failure to consider Bureau of Reclamation recommendations for more analysis in the face of fracking-caused earthquake risks to Choke Canyon dam.
Since the Center filed its original protest in February, public records obtained from the Texas Railroad Commission and Bureau of Reclamation revealed that four plugged wells are leaking gas, two within and two near Choke Canyon Reservoir, a primary Corpus Christi water supply.
But records show that since then, federal, state and Corpus Christi officials have considered underwater inspections of the leaking wells.
It’s alarming that they’re allowing this lease sale to continue.” Conservation groups and the city of Corpus Christi filed formal protests in February challenging the leasing plan, raising concerns about spills, water contamination and earthquakes that could jeopardize dam integrity and harm downstream water users.

Threats to underground water contamination.
There is an increase in borehole drilling and digging of wells in urban areas, especially in new residential areas because of unavailability of reticulated water services.In addition, there are no sewer services in these areas, construction of septic tanks evades local authorities’ by laws.
Consequently, there is underground water contamination in some of the boreholes and wells.
In this regard, it is important for every household to know the quality of water they are drinking and using, to avoid adverse health effects.
This is forcing people to construct their own septic tanks, latrines, boreholes and deep wells.
The main form of contamination by septic tanks and latrines is of bacterial nature e.g. faecal coliform.
Sewage bursts Sewage pipe bursts are a threat to underground water quality.
In Harare, most of the sprouting new residential areas are built on wetlands and these wetlands have been purifying water for years.
In some cases the geological environment is linked to chronic diseases such as renal failure due to the presence of lethal doses of metals.
Examples of different water qualities caused by geological rock structure are: hardness of water, high salinity, high fluoride levels which causes rusty teeth, high levels of metals.

BLOG ROUND-UP: Trump’s water solutions, Delta Stewardship Council’s Delta Plan amendments, Water well bill, Increasing salmon runs, River management in the Anthropocene, Whiter WOTUS, and more ….
… ” Read more from Restore the Delta here: Delta Stewardship Council stalls vote on Delta Plan amendments California’s water well bill will tell us who is tapping depleted groundwater basins: Juliet Christian-Smith writes, “Groundwater is a shared resource between communities and landowners, much like a joint bank account is a shared resource between individuals.
At the same time, there were a million more Central Valley salmon being harvested each year in sport and commercial fisheries along the coast and in the rivers of the Central Valley.
… ” Read more from the California Fisheries Blog here: How do we increase salmon runs in 2017?
Although the report at first blush appears to be very pessimistic, a closer read reveals a more optimistic view that “most of these fishes can continue to persist if appropriate actions are taken.” The authors have stated that they “are optimistic that positive change is imminent and that if the solutions are fully implemented, many of the species reviewed in the…report will thrive in the future.” Importantly, “the time to act is now” according to CalTrout.
… ” Read more from the NCWA blog here: The time to act is now!
Efforts to restore fish passage and river habitats over the past several decades have paid off quite remarkably, but those efforts are now in jeopardy due to the recent drought and impending changes in water management in the Central Valley and Butte Creek.
… ” Read more from the California Fisheries blog here: Butte Creek spring run chinook salmon Water rights adjudication, Utah style: John Fleck writes, “Here in New Mexico, in the relatively populous Middle Rio Grande Valley, we have no expectation that water rights – the legal question of who is entitled to the use of how much water – will ever be clearly determined, at least not in the lifetimes of anyone involved in water management today.
Dan Farber writes, “President Trump ordered EPA and the Army Corps to review the Obama Administration’s WOTUS rule, which sets expansive bounds on federal jurisdiction over water bodies and wetlands.
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California’s drought is all but over, but some wells are still dry.
Despite a wet California winter, six years of drought have left thousands of dry wells in the state’s Central Valley.
It’s one of four counties that still receive emergency drought funding.
Today, her yard is dried up, her family stays inside, and she doesn’t even have enough water for her garden.
They are helping Okieville residents organize the community and obtain state and federal funding for a new well.
“So now, people are spending what little money they have on water, because without water everything stops, you can’t cook you can’t grow food.” Coyne says the state and county provide bottled water and household tank deliveries, which run about $400,000 a month.
For houses without tanks, residents have made do by stringing hoses between houses.
“The drought is, just people don’t have money to drill the wells, he said, “and that’s the biggest problem.” The large-scale farms surrounding Okieville can afford to drill deeper but most farmworkers can’t.
A lot of families who could afford to walk away from their homes have left, but many can’t do that or don’t want to.
“Yes, without water, Marquez said, [we] can’t do anything.”

See Also: Chemical found in wells that supply Chincoteague drinking water Chincoteague and NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, which lies across the bay from the island community, had partnered on a unique project, West said.
So, they worked out an arrangement to allow Chincoteague to connect a pipe to Wallops’ water system.
Supplementing the town’s water supply was simply a matter of turning a valve, West said.
Once the shallow well was turned off and the pipe was flushed, the chemical could no longer be detected in the deeper pipe’s water.
The potential health effects of human exposure to the compounds are not fully understood, but the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued health advisory limits for them last year.
Tests of individual wells detected PFAS in one of four deep wells and three shallow ones.
In two of the shallow wells and the deep well, it was detected at a level above the health advisory, according to a NASA statement.
The town then began using only the three deep wells where no PFAS chemicals were found to produce drinking water.
Recent samples taken from shallow wells on the south side of the base, however, showed "very low" levels of PFAS-related compounds.
But until now, everything has been done in a step-wise, careful fashion.” Despite the scrutiny of PFAS at Wallops, it’s unlikely that officials will ever find out how long Chincoteague’s drinking water had contained trace amounts of the chemical, Matson added.