‘Everything to do with dams’ and not septage, says Cook
Charlie Unkefer
Mount Shasta Area Newspapers
10/28/2009
The local environmental watchdog group the Klamath Riverkeeper recently submitted a letter to Siskiyou County demanding that it comply with prevailing environmental laws for its county septage pond, which is located near the Siskiyou County Airport.
The letter states that the group plans to seek court-ordered compliance if the county does not correct the problem within 30 days.
“If septic waste or toxic chemicals from the aging Siskiyou Airport septage pond northeast of Montague were seeping into groundwater, Oregon Slough or even the Shasta River, no one would know it,” said Erica Terence of the Klamath RiverKeeper. “That’s because the County doesn’t monitor its unpermitted septage pond for groundwater pollution or report waste discharges to the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board as state law requires.”
Supervisor responds
“This has everything to do with dams and nothing to do with septage,” said District 1 Supervisor Jim Cook, referring to fact that the county is one of a small group of stakeholders that, to date, has expressed dissatisfaction with the current Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement.
“The Water Board has made it tough for us,” continued Cook. “This is the Riverkeeper and the water board trying to get even with us over the issue of (Klamath) dam removal.”
Cook said that the county has been working to address the issue.
“The tentative plan is to close the facility and build a new one,” said Cook. “We have a preliminary engineering report on a site by the (Yreka) Oberlin dump,” he said.
Water contamination
“The letter is really just a way for us to notify the county and express our concern,” said Terence. “The (main problem) is the high potential that this septage has for leaking into the groundwater.”
She also noted that the water table in the area in question is well under ten feet and that the bedrock in the region is known to be highly porous.
Water board response
“Factually, we do not disagree (with what the RiverKeeper has presented),” said John Short of the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board.
“This is an historic facility, and it is inappropriate... We have sent two letters to the county expressing our concerns regarding water quality... In today’s world, this is not the appropriate way to deal with septage.”
In response to Cook’s statement about the Water Board “trying to get even”, Short said, “My responsibility has to do with waste being discharged into land that could affect water quality.” He said he knew nothing about the dam removal issue, other than what he has read in the newspaper.
Short added that his staff had recently been in Yreka to hold meetings on the issue.
