Today's headlines:
- Spokane wildfires turn the Spokane Convention Center into a Red Cross shelter. Hear from one woman whose mom was taken there.
- State officials are working to get the Spokane wildfires deemed as a federal disaster.
- Avista starts its evaluation process now that the worst of Saturday's wildfire action is over.
- West Plains residents will decide whether to pay a tax to create an aquifer protection area. Ben Brattebo, Spokane County’s water programs administrator, explains it.
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Hundreds of people are staying at a Red Cross shelter at the Spokane Convention Center as wildfires burn through parts of the city. 62-year-old Marci Kirk says her mom was taken to the shelter from an assisted living home Saturday afternoon. She says she's grateful Spokane Transit was able to evacuate her safely.
"It was really scary, you know, because I was getting the alerts, the fire alerts, and I called and I said, "Hey, I think you guys are, you know, like level go. And one of the caregivers said…I don't know, probably within an hour, they were out," Kirk said.
Sunday, she saw on the news that her mom’s care home had burned down. She hopes the agency will be able to find her and the other residents another place to live soon. She says many people staying at the shelter were evacuated from care homes.
More than 5,000 homes in the Spokane area are still under evacuation orders. Officials estimate more than 600 structures have burned.
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The wheels are in motion to have Spokane’s wildfires declared as a federal disaster.
Washington Governor Bob Ferguson says he discussed it yesterday with President Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
He says the state is including several needs in its initial application.
“I know search and rescue was a part of that request. I know that housing assistance was a part of that request. I know that assistance with literally food, right, so folks who need three meals a day right now was certainly a part of that request. I know that debris removal was a part of that request,” Ferguson said.
Ferguson says Washington has a good relationship with FEMA, so he expects a quick response. He says the state has also begun work on a separate application to secure money for long-term post-fire recovery projects.
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Avista officials are starting to assess the damage done to the power system by this weekend’s wildfires.
Chief Executive Heather Rosentrater says parts of Avista’s transmission system in west Spokane, especially, were damaged.
“We just received access and are starting those repairs now, but until our transmission, specifically two lines on our transmission system are repaired, we're operating with lower capabilities. And so we are at risk of some customers that aren't currently out now at the peak of our system during those hours of the day that our customers are using the most energy that we could see some outages due to that reduced capability on our transmission system,” Rosentrater said.
Rosentrater says Avista cut the power to more than 6,700 customers during the peak of Saturday’s wildfire outbreak in Spokane. Before turning it back on, she says crews found and fixed some problems, such as trees blown into power lines, that could have caused more fires. She says power has since been restored in all of those high-risk areas.
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Voters on Spokane’s West Plains will decide tomorrow whether to tax themselves to protect their drinking water.
They’ve been asked to consider whether to authorize a West Plains Aquifer Protection Area. The West Plains Aquifer is separate from the Spokane-Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer, which has its own designed protection area.
Ben Brattebo is Spokane County’s water programs administrator. We talked with him about this for Inland Journal in May.
Ben Brattebo: The proposed West Plains Aquifer Protection Area would provide funds to study those questions and dig into the details and understand and try to understand better what water resources are available for the community on the West Plains.
DN: Are there priorities when it comes to West Plains? If there was an Aquifer Protection Area that you would want to study first?
BB: It's a great question. We haven't had funding to study the aquifers on the West Plains for a number of years. We did quite a bit of work in the early 2000s for watershed planning, and there was a lot of look at water quantity. And that is, we'd want to look at water quantity, both groundwater and surface water.
Some of the surface water that, when it transitions from underground to above ground, there's places where we can see that happening and we could understand that better. The big topic right now in the community for the West Plains is PFAS contamination. So I suspect we would use some of the funding towards PFAS.
But generally we don't have a specific plan of how we want to use this. We want to have funding available to put together a plan, work with the cities on the West Plains to work with them to see what their priorities are. But those big picture questions of how much water is there and of what quality is it are the questions we're looking to answer.
DN: Who would physically do the work? Would you contract with private companies or does the county have the ability to do that?
BB: So the county has staff that have been doing aquifer protection activities in the Spokane Valley and North Spokane for a number of years. So we have staff that can do that. We likely would hire probably another person or a person would have a lot of their attention focused on the West Plains. But we can also use the funds to hire a contractor to, for example, put in a monitoring well where there was no information about what the groundwater is. In that case, we could hire a contractor to do that. We can also use these funds to supplement or use as match for grant funding. So we might be able to use these funds from the aquifer protection area to apply for a grant to do a larger study. And that could be county staff. It could also be city staff. Maybe the cities on the West Plains might have some interest in studying their water supply that they use for their city. They could use those funds. So it could be a range. At this point, I think we would have county staff do the initial planning and have a county staff member available to focus on the West Plains.
DN: Would this have happened without the PFAS discovery, do you think?
BB: I don't know. I think there has been a lot of focus on West Plains water in recent years.
DN: Because of growth?
BB: Because of growth, because of water availability, there's been places where water wells, the water levels have dropped significantly and cities have had to change how they get their water. There's been recent years, there's been expansion of water supply from the city of Spokane up onto the West Plains. And there has been areas of high water tables. So there's places where there's too much water where it shows up on the surface and this would be funds that could be available to use to study those and hopefully come up with solutions for the community.
DN: So in the West Plains, the aquifer protection area, would that be separate from PFAS and what to do with PFAS or is it kind of all together?
BB: It's kind of all together. So PFAS is the big contaminant that we're very concerned about right now. And there's a lot of activity towards that. But the aquifer protection area, this one is proposed to be for 20 years. And so the fee would be stable. It wouldn't increase over time. It would be collected over that 20 years.
And so right now there's a lot of attention on PFAS. But 20 years from now, I don't know what the attention will be. And so this is a very predictable fund for the county and the cities to use and answer questions. So when questions today, we're talking about PFAS, in the future we may be talking about something else. And so I think it will be a blend of all of that.
That’s Ben Brattebo, the water programs administrator for Spokane County. We had this conversation in May and aired it on our Inland Journal program.
The West Plains Aquifer Protection Area would tax property owners up to $1.25 a month if they pull water from the aquifer and another $1.25 if they dispose of their sewage in a septic tank.
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SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting was contributed by Anna King and Doug Nadvornick.
Jordy Jones hosts and produces the show.
Web support is provided by Anna Gyure Havlek.
