WA state: Spokane city and county now liable in PFAS crisis, too
The two governments jointly own Spokane International Airport, which discovered the chemicals six years before disclosing to the public. The decision could direct funding from the city and county for cleanup.
BY AARON HEDGE
Range (Inland Northwest)
AUGUST 29, 2025
The Washington State Department of Ecology has declared that both the city of Spokane and Spokane County are on the hook for cleaning up the toxic “forever chemicals” contamination stemming from firefighting drills at the Spokane International Airport (SIA).
The state in 2023 had named SIA as responsible for cleaning up the PFAS contamination that had leached from its tarmacs into local groundwater for hundreds of homes on the West Plains.
The two local governments own the airport, which is overseen by a governing board partly made up of top city and county officials.
The August 27 announcement is a key moment of accountability in a pollution saga characterized by blame-casting among local, state and federal agencies, which clean water activists say has impeded solutions to the crisis. It also protects access to additional funding and resources the county and city have access to that the airport doesn’t.
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For the entire article, see
https://rangemedia.co/wa-state-spokane-city-county-liable-pfas-crisis/
—
Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)
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