(The following article by Warren Cornwall was posted on the Seattle Times website on March 8.)
SEATTLE — Six months ago, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway hosted a triumphant grand opening at its $42 million refueling station on the outskirts of Spokane.
The facility, across the state line in Idaho, was supposed to be a shining example of the newer, cleaner railroad.
Gone were the old days that left a legacy of contaminated groundwater and toxic soil across the country, including at least 14 cleanup sites in Washington, many in the Puget Sound area.
The new station featured layers of protections meant to catch spilled diesel, and for good reason. It’s perched atop an aquifer so pure that hundreds of thousands of residents get their drinking water from it without using a trace of chlorine to sterilize it.
Today, the fuel depot has turned from a point of pride to a black eye for BNSF, the largest railroad operator in Washington and Northern Idaho. The depot has sprung several leaks of oily wastewater, including one that contaminated the aquifer.
Officials say the plume of pollutants is not bad enough to shut down any local water supplies, but the threat to the aquifer has riled those who fought against construction of the depot, as well as local and state officials in Idaho and Washington. It also has sparked questions about how the protections would hold up in the event of a massive spill.
“We have this mentality, ‘Well, it is state of the art, it will never leak,’ ” said Rachael Paschal Osborn, a Spokane attorney who represented Friends of the Aquifer and the Sierra Club in unsuccessful efforts to block the depot. “Well, in fact, it is leaking.”
Railroad officials say they are working as quickly as possible to clean up the leaked fuel and figure out how several safeguards failed. Dump trucks hauled away 200 cubic yards of contaminated soil. Construction crews have torn up rail lines and carved away concrete to expose a plastic liner beneath that had leaked.
“We’re working aggressively to make sure the environment is protected,” said BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas.
An Idaho judge last week extended for one week an earlier order shutting down the depot while the problems are fixed. In the meantime, BNSF trains must refuel elsewhere.
Water for 400,000
One-hundred and fifty feet of dirt and rocks separate the railroad depot from the Spokane Valley-Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer. It is a slow-moving underground river capped with boulders and gravel deposited by massive floods in the last ice age. Water wells poke into the aquifer like giant straws, siphoning out water for more than 400,000 people in the Spokane area and Northern Idaho.
The aquifer already is vulnerable to development. Stormwater laden with oil and fuel runs off of parking lots and streets, seeping into the ground until it’s diluted by the aquifer. Tank farms in the area house 30 million to 40 million gallons of fuel above the water.
When BNSF unveiled plans to build a new fuel depot, it became a lightning rod for ongoing concern about the health of the aquifer, said Stan Miller, who managed Spokane County’s aquifer-protection program for 23 years before retiring last year.
Environmentalists, residents and Washington regulators and politicians lined up against the proposal, warning a catastrophic train derailment or tank rupture could taint the drinking water.
Then-Gov. Gary Locke opposed it, along with the Spokane County Commission.
Burlington Northern promised to build a virtually leak-proof facility exceeding federal requirements that govern railroads. The depot also would significantly speed refueling for a company where shipping time is money. Refueling in Seattle can take up to eight hours, compared with 30 to 45 minutes at the new depot.
Speed freight, create jobs
Business groups on both sides of the state line rallied behind the project as a way to speed freight shipments and as a source of 40 new jobs.
In 2000, commissioners in Kootenai County, Idaho, voted 2-1 to allow the project, overturning the recommendation of a county hearing examiner. After a federal panel in 2001 turned down an appeal, construction began and the matter receded from the public spotlight.
That changed in December, when the company discovered a crushed pipe leaking fuel-tainted water, probably since the depot opened in September. The leak poured as much as 200,000 gallons of oily liquid into the ground in an area where the company didn’t install protective liners.
Minute amounts of pollution were found in the aquifer near the spill, though not enough to trigger concerns about drinking water quality, said Marc Kalbaugh, of Idaho’s Department of Environmental Quality. Pressure tests revealed two additional, smaller leaks.
Idaho officials became more alarmed last month after a second wastewater leak breached at least two of three barriers meant to catch spills before they reach the aquifer. The water seeped through cracks in a concrete-lined trench, and then got through a 6-centimeter thick layer of plastic buried underground, apparently through a malfunctioning seal around a pipe.
It’s still unknown if a second plastic sheet — the final line of defense — held.
Melonas, the company spokesman, said officials did find the leaks, and that the final plastic sheet appears to have held.
“Some would argue that the system is properly functioning,” Melonas said. Asked if he would say it was working, he replied, “I would just say ‘some would say.’ ”
Even some past supporters, however, are expressing reservations about the depot.
“We were told that it was foolproof. It didn’t necessarily turn out to be foolproof. It’s created problems for anyone who took a position on this thing, us included,” said Jeff Selle, government-affairs manager for the Spokane Regional Chamber of Commerce, a backer of the depot.
Miller, the former manager at Spokane County’s aquifer-protection program, said these leaks probably pose little risk to the aquifer. More fuel gets into the aquifer after a rainstorm, he said. But it leaves him wondering how the protections would hold up in the event of a massive spill.
“Did they poke holes in everything when they put it in?” asked Miller. “We’re sitting here with a situation that was supposed to be state of the art, but if they poked holes in it they wasted time and money.”
In recent weeks, Burlington Northern attorneys have argued the state of Idaho did not have the authority to close the depot, and it may appeal state actions in federal court. After initially rejecting a state request to voluntarily shut down, the company has abided by the court order.
Still, it’s not clear if cleanup or aquifer-protection issues will become fodder for the courts.
“We’re studying all legal options,” said Melonas.
Even those opposed to the depot concede state and local officials might have lacked the power to stop its construction, or to beef up regulations.
“It’s hard to conceive in this day and age there are types of activities that are not regulated to protect the environment, but indeed railroads appear to be one of them,” said Osborn, the Spokane attorney.
Little Washington can do
Washington state, meanwhile, has remained on the sidelines, voicing its support for Idaho’s demands that the depot be shut until problems are solved. With the depot across state lines, there’s little Washington environmental regulators can do, said Sheryl Hutchison, spokeswoman for the state Department of Ecology.
In Washington, the railroad’s largest pollution problems stem from practices over many years. BNSF owns at least 14 contaminated sites in the state, according to the Ecology Department.
They range from an old leaking oil pipeline discovered near the Tacoma rail yard to a former refueling depot in Skykomish that spilled so much oil over the decades that much of the town may need to be dug up and the soil replaced.
Since 1996, the railroad spilled at least 77,500 gallons of diesel, chemicals and other pollutants during 118 incidents in the state, according to Ecology Department records.
“It seems like wherever there’s a depot, there’s a spill or a leak,” Hutchison said.