Search this Chehalis River Council site!Friday, January 21, 2005
By Brian Mittge, bmittge@chronline.com
Maybe it was late at night, with the driver of a tanker truck looking nervously over his shoulder as he turned the spigot to empty the tanks. Maybe it was daylight, with a brazen or even innocent dumping of some old barrels of gunk.
Somehow, sometime, at least 500 gallons of PCE, a suspected cancer-causing chemical, were dumped into Berwick Creek near what is now the United Rentals building on Hamilton Road just a stone's throw from Interstate 5.
That chemical, which is heavier than water, sank to the bottom of the creek and is slowly dissolving, creating a large plume of contaminating ground water flowing northwest toward Dillenbaugh Creek and the Newaukum River.
"If not cleaned up, this PCE will contaminate the ground water for many decades to come," the Environmental Protection Agency said in a fact sheet on the Superfund cleanup site.
The contamination happened at least 15 years ago, according to the EPA, and is near the area where, in 1999, the Washington Department of Ecology found 64 drums of PCE buried under a building owned by the S.C. Breen Construction Co. PCE, short for tetrachloroethylene, is a chemical used for metal degreasing, dry cleaning and other industrial processes.
"It can move easily through air, water, and soils, and may harm people," according to the EPA. "Exposure to high levels of PCE could cause cancer or such non-cancerous effects as dizziness and difficulty speaking and walking." The chemical has spread at least a mile or a mile and a half in the shallow aquifer underneath Berwick and Dillenbaugh creeks. In 2002, the city of Chehalis and the EPA installed a water line along Labree, Hamilton and Rice roads to bring city water to those whose wells could become contaminated with the chemical.
The EPA is looking for any information even anonymous tips about who might have dumped the chemicals into Berwick Creek.
Anyone with information may contact EPA Project Manager Bob Kievit at 753-9014, or EPA Washington Operations Office, 300 Desmond Drive S.E., Suite 102, Lacey, WA 98503.
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