Tuesday's postcard, and Al French in the PFAS corn maze

October 22, 2024

October 22, 2024

Rufous-sided towhee in a riparian thicket

Unraveling a Spokane politician’s search for himself

The most dramatic scene in the Al French “forever chemicals” saga took place at a packed auditorium in Airway Heights in early June of this year. To the commissioner’s credit, he’d accepted an invitation from the West Plains Water Coalition—a citizen group whose core membership consists of private well owners who share zip codes with two large airports—Fairchild Air Force Base and Spokane International Airport (SIA). The airports are situated in the “V” between Interstate-90 and U.S. Highway 2, west of Spokane. Both are sources for PFAS—toxic, synthetic chemicals used in aviation fire-fighting foams—that have contaminated much of the West Plains groundwater. Both airports are in the county commission district French has represented for well over a decade. The commissioner is a longstanding member of the board of directors for SIA. Until this year, he had also been a board member for the Spokane Regional Health District.

That Fairchild was/is a major source of PFAS contaminating West Plains groundwater has been known since 2017. But it wasn’t until last spring that SIA documents obtained via a public records request confirmed what many had suspected—that the commercial airport was also a source of PFAS groundwater contamination. This was unwelcome news and when the state’s Department of Ecology notified the airport that it intended to enforce a cleanup under the state’s Model Toxics Control Act, SIA’s first response was defiance.

By this spring, however, French (who is up for election in a couple weeks) took a more proactive approach, and began shaping and promoting ideas for how to solve the contaminated water problem. But when he did so, he found himself running smack into another problem—namely his failure to disclose the SIA PFAS contamination in 2017, and allegations he obstructed a key technical study to determine the breadth and extent of PFAS contamination at and near SIA. A year ago French and other SIA officials were questioned about their silence by reporters from the Seattle Times. The Times reported that French declined to answer “because of litigation” though “he did not specify what the litigation was related to.” Likewise, the four-term county commissioner deflected my request for a formal interview last December, and chose not to respond to a subsequent list of written questions.

Al French fielding hostile questions at an Airway Heights gathering in early June

As the controversy over his role escalated it would have been hard for French to ignore Craig Volosing. Volosing is the president of the Friends of Palisades, a conservation group whose membership is rooted in the Palisades neighborhood near the Spokane airport, in an area where more than 200 private wells have tested positive for PFAS at levels exceeding federal drinking water standards. When French wrapped up his talk before the coalition audience last June, Volosing (and others in the audience) seized the opportunity to confront him about his role in keeping the Spokane airport’s PFAS contamination “under wraps for so long.”

In response, a rather strange thing happened. Instead of arguing with Volosing, the usually brash commissioner punted.

The airport’s PFAS problem, he said, “has been an evolving topic“ and he wasn’t ready to answer “that question.” He continued: “I now have staff that's going back through the last seven years of my activity at the county and involvement with the airport as well as others. And so we are going to be coming forward with a record, with documents to back it up, so that we can answer that question. Because quite honestly, I don't remember everything that happened seven years ago.”

Volosing rose to his feet a second time and flatly accused French of putting commercial interests ahead of public health. French calmly predicted that the facts his self-investigation would bring to light would prove Volosing wrong. But there were obstacles, notably “legal reasons” for why he couldn’t share all of what he knew, so he was “working to try and get the freedom to be able to talk about those.”

As he stepped away from the podium a woman’s voice called out, asking when he would report back with the answers he promised. Three weeks, French said.

Two months passed. French’s response came not in a public meeting, but via a lengthy article in the Spokesman-Review newspaper, under the headline: County Commissioner Al French fights back with newly released documents muddling the waters in PFAS saga.

To be sure, one of the “muddling” revelations is that a 11/22/17 memo Todd Woodard (SIA’s public affairs director) composed about the discovery of PFAS in the airport’s monitoring wells was sent to a KREM-2 reporter. For reasons yet unanswered, KREM didn’t report on the email’s verification of the PFAS contamination. This is now offered as evidence that SIA (and French, by extension) weren’t trying to hide anything. But it also means French and others privy to the contents of Woodard’s email would have been the only ones to notice that the station didn’t report on it. As the Seattle Times reported last October, the public—and entities like the Department of Ecology and public health officials—were still left in the dark.

Absent from the S-R article (and the two and a half page “timeline” that French delivered to the newspaper) is any direct response to the allegations and questions that Volosing and others had put to French about his role. Moreover, the timeline French delivered to the newspaper is rife with errors and omissions.

For example, the very first paragraph in French’s timeline reads: “Prior to 2017 there was no general knowledge about the present (sic) or health complications derived from PFAS substances.”

That’s plainly untrue. The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued its initial drinking water health advisory for PFAS in May of 2016. But, more to the point, French clearly understood the significance of PFAS groundwater contamination by the spring of 2017 when the City of Airway Heights—in his district—was forced to hastily shutdown its domestic water wells because of PFAS contamination.

Another example is French’s assertion that it was not him but the Department of Ecology that delayed the start of the “PFAS transport and fate” investigation, the purpose of which is to get a better understanding of the spread of PFAS contamination in groundwater. In his “timeline” French alleges “Ecology was offering the county a grant to do Ecology’s work” because Ecology is a regulatory agency and the county is not. It is a baseless charge: the grant is plainly scoped as a technical investigation of the sort the county has traditionally been involved in, often with state funding.

As I reported last December, there is compelling evidence from documents and highly credible named sources that it was French who delayed and nearly derailed the study. Yet, in his interview with the S-R, French had the temerity to blame Ecology.

“They were the ones that actually delayed the study for three years trying to get somebody else to do their work,” French told the S-R. “Why did they? Why didn’t they just step to the line and do the studies from the very beginning, back in 2020? That’s their job. They have the authority, they have the resources.”

There is zero evidence that Ecology delayed the study, and plenty of evidence to the contrary: that the agency held its door open, so to speak, as the project’s principals went to great lengths to try to overcome French’s obstruction. Moreover, when Ecology finally learned (in 2023) of the PFAS contamination at SIA—and then moved to use its authority to compel a cleanup—the airport lambasted and fought the agency tooth and nail for months before finally agreeing to a remediation plan.

The “Continuation Session”

There are other glaring errors in French’s account, and some came into light, however briefly, just a few weeks ago. The occasion was a September 26th hearing on a recall petition brought against French by West Plains resident Mary Benham, together with a newly formed local citizen group, and Fuse Washington, a statewide progressive activist group. Shortly after the hearing began, Knoll Lowney, the attorney representing the petitioners, asked presiding Judge Gary Libey, to allow him to schedule a deposition of French for the following week.

Lowney contended that a “last minute” declaration from French appeared to contain “untruths” and “raises more questions than it answers.” By example, Lowney noted that he’d learned “just a few minutes ago” (apparently from French’s attorneys) of an error in French’s timeline—namely that a County Commission meeting that French stated took place on July 26, 2022, had actually taken place a week earlier, on July 19th. (In advance of the recall petition hearing French produced and signed a short declaration that incorporated, under oath, the “timeline” he’d presented to the S-R reporters in August.)

The error in date of the meeting is another indication of how haphazardly French’s self-investigation was conducted. But what matters more is what actually happened on July 19, 2022—because what actually happened on that day bears no resemblance to what French asserted in his timeline.

Ironically, one of the people French met with on July 19, 2022 is none other than Craig Volosing. Volosing arrived at the commissioner’s office with three other residents of the Palisades area, one of whom brought a container of PFAS-contaminated well water and challenged the commissioner to have a drink from it. French reportedly declined.

According to Volosing and the others in his small group, their July 19, 2022 meeting with the commissioner was driven by their concern about PFAS being detected in private well tests (funded by homeowners) and their frustration at the lack of progress toward securing the state grant funds for the area-wide groundwater investigation. Volosing and the others also say French affected surprise and expressed disappointment at the reported delays in the grant request, and pledged his full support for the project.

What the Palisades group didn’t know at the time is that French had already sandbagged the grant request—not once, but twice.

The County Commissioners held two recorded meetings on July 19, 2022—their regular Tuesday “consent agenda” meeting in the Public Works building auditorium, beginning at 2 p.m., which was followed, after a short recess, by a “continuation session” at their cramped meeting room in the county courthouse. Both sessions are preserved on videotape. There is no mention of the Ecology grant in the 2 p.m. “consent agenda” session, which lasted less than 15 minutes and took place after the Palisades group met with French. It is in the “continuation session” following the “consent agenda” session that the subject of the Ecology “Transport and Fate” grant was taken came up. Thus, the order of the sessions was (1) French’s meeting with the Palisades group, (2) the short “consent agenda” meeting in the Public Works auditorium, and (3) the “continuation session” in the commissioners conference room in the county courthouse.

The difference between how French describes the meeting in his sworn declaration/timeline, and what actually took place is a difference between night and day. In his timeline French offers this account, contemporaneous to the July 19th meeting(s).

“After consultation with SIA leadership and legal counsel I indicated to County staff that the County was not the right agency to accept the grant or do the study. Commissioner Kuney came to the same conclusion without any interaction with me and suggested that the grant opportunity be presented to the Spokane Regional Health District (SRHD) for their consideration…On July 19, 2022, I met with representatives of the Palisades Neighborhood and agreed to take Ecology’s grant offer to the full Board of County Commissioners which I did on July 26th (sic). After considering a variety of potential issues the Board of County Commissioners unanimously declined the grant. The Board of County Commissioners did recommend again that the grant opportunity be taken to the SRHD for their consideration. At the time, Commissioner Kuney was part of the leadership of the Health Board and carried the grant to the Health District. The Health District ultimately decided again that they were not able to fulfill the requirements of the grant and passed on the opportunity.”

How these events could have happened the way French described in his timeline is a mystery, at least to me. Although French’s “timeline” includes a half dozen exhibits, he offered no documentary support for how and when the county commissioners and the health district would have made the decisions he attributes to them.

Because there were no county commission meeting on July 26th, it does beg the question of what happened, the week before, on July 19th. We know that the commission didn’t discuss the PFAS issue in its morning session. What we know is what happened during the “continuation session” that afternoon. We know this because it is on video, at 26 minutes into the recording (below).

Remarkably, French introduces the topic of the study as if he can barely remember the initiative.

“Evidently” he says, “there was an opportunity to get a grant from Ecology in the amount of about 450,000 that would do well testing out in the West Plains for PFAS and PFOS.” French also professes not to know much about the commissioner’s discussions on the grant request proposal and, at one points, turns to the two other commissioners to ask: “do either one of you remember this conversation or not?”

But then, in fits and starts, French begins to describe the idea of the county supporting the the health district’s application for the grant. What’s strange about this is that it was French’s obstruction that prevented the commissioners from being briefed on the Ecology grant request two years earlier. It was this obstruction, in early 2020, that led Mike Hermanson, an acclaimed county water specialist, to approach the health district to see if it would be willing to administer the grant. The health district stepped in and submitted the application, thus keeping the grant request alive.

But fresh off the intense meeting with Volosing and the Palisades group on July 19, 2022, French was clearly suggesting that the county commissioners consider supporting the project if Ecology awarded the grant funds to the health district. You see that, clearly, near the end of the meeting where French actually pulls out a map that Volosing’s group had given him earlier that day, showing the location of hundreds of potentially affected private wells on the West Plains.

“So that’s it,” he says, speaking in the direction of Scott Simmons, the county’s chief executive officer. “But if it sounds like something we can lean into, then I can go ahead and, well, you can ahead and coordinate that.”

Simmons nods his head, replies “yep” and then adds that he’ll circle back with Rob Lindsay the manager in the county’s water resources department who had originally tried to place the grant request on the commissioner’s agenda in early 2020. French replies: “Thank you. That’s all I have.”

Again, according to French’s timeline, submitted to the court in his recall proceeding, the result of the July 19th meeting was basically the opposite—to quote French: “After considering a variety of potential issues the Board of County Commissioners unanimously declined the grant.”

How the commissioners would have done this is unclear. It couldn’t have happened on the 26th (as French erroneously states in his timeline) because the board didn’t meet that day. It couldn’t have happened on the 19th unless there was an unannounced executive session, later in the day, in clear violation of the state’s Open Public Meetings Act.

Because French implicated commissioner and board chair Mary Kuney in the alleged 2022 decisions opposing the grant request, I submitted a half dozen questions to her in writing last week. She has not yet responded.

The visiting Superior Count judge, Gary Libey, denied Lowney’s request to depose the commissioner, and dismissed the recall petition the same day. Lowney told reporters the petitioners would appeal the dismissal to the state supreme court.

—tjc

Editor’s note: This article was updated October 23rd to reflect the correct order of the meetings that occurred prior to the “Continuation session” meeting recorded in the embedded video, where the open discussion of the Ecology “Transport and Fate” grant was discussed.