If I lived near the San Luis Obispo County Regional Airport, I’d be pissed at all the state and federal agencies tasked with ensuring I had clean water to drink.
Nothing good comes out of the ground along Buckley Road. It’s tainted with chemicals, chemicals area residents had happily and unknowingly been consuming for decades—until 2013, when word started to leak out about a large plume of a carcinogenic degreaser/solvent known as TCE (trichloroethylene) hanging out in the groundwater.
The Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board had known about the potential pollution problem since 1998. In 2019, the water board finally held an entity—Noll Inc.—accountable for causing the issue. How’s that for a fast turnaround time?
The company denied ever using TCE, but at least the water board had completed its long-ass version of the blame game! The fingered culprit had to provide replacement water to residents whose wells were poisoned. About 14 wells contained TCE. Whoo! Good job government!
Not so fast. Four years later, the regional water board had a big oops moment. As in whoopsie daisy, we might have been wrong. Sorry, not sorry, Noll Inc.! Good luck trying to recoup the $200,000 we forced you to spend righting the wrong you never committed!
In a funny—but not in a haha way—turn of events, the water board stated that a company once called Central Coast Laboratories used TCE to dissolve asphalt. This is the very same company that the Nolls tried to get the water board to investigate when the dastardly deed was pinned on them. And where is that saga at now? Not over yet. In 2023, a quarter century after the pollution came to the surface, the water board still has yet to issue a final order against the most recent guilty party.
Now, Buckley Road residents like Kathy Borland are experiencing déja vu as they watch the water board, SLO County, and Cal Fire royally muck up another chemical investigation. Only this time, it’s PFAS. You know, per- and polyfluorinated substances? Oh. You don’t know? Let me explain.
The chemicals don’t break down in the environment—similar to the legacy pesticide DDT—are connected to health impacts like cancer, and they’re in everything from windbreakers to your Teflon pan. We’re experts at poisoning ourselves.
Known as “forever chemicals,” PFAS also make an appearance in a firefighting foam that seemed to have its heyday starting in the 1970s. How did it get in the groundwater near the airport?
SLO County is one of 30 airports in the state that were required to test soil and groundwater for PFAS due to the required firefighter trainings that took place on airport properties over the past few decades. But it’s a special standout among its aviator peers due to the amount of contamination found—one of the highest concentrations in the state—and the water situation—a bunch of local residents who rely on groundwater that doesn’t get filtered through a municipal system.
Nice! Way to go SLO!
That deserves a slow clap, amirite?
All signs point to the airport as far as PFAS pollution goes. But it could be anyone’s fault, according to SLO County’s conclusions in its own investigation of the airport property—just throwing out some extra blame, in case a different culprit could get the finger.
Since 2019, the county’s been investigating PFAS. At the end of 2022, it started letting residents know whether their groundwater was contaminated, but not handing over any solutions to their newfound-but-longterm pollution problem. And that process is ongoing.
So what’s been happening in the meantime? A settlement agreement that residents knew nothing about prior to a “listening session” with the regional water board.
Borland, whose well has the lucky distinction of containing both TCE and PFAS, is suspicious that the settlement agreement will do anything for the approximately 52 wells and counting contaminated with foamy forever chemicals. She is one of 11 property owners who get to deal with both! Special.
Together, she and other airport area residents submitted dozens of letters to the regional water board about the issue. Many of those residents also showed up to a June 23 listening session to speak their piece to the board members, who seemed to be largely in the dark about everything that was going on.
Residents talked about raising kids and grandkids on well water that they recently learned was contaminated, health issues they believed may have been caused by the forever chemicals, and a general feeling that the agencies that should be protecting them are doing quite the opposite. Many were upset after learning about the settlement agreement, with Marge Barinka telling the water board that she was insulted about this voluntary agreement between the water board, Cal Fire, and the county that residents had nothing to do with.
“But it’s our property, it’s our land, it’s our water, it’s our animals. … I just feel insulted,” she said. “It’s our lives, it’s our property, and yet, you are the responsible party.”
Sure seems like another version of the blame game to me: dragging out another legal process that leaves the very people who are supposed to be protected, unprotected.
I’m insulted, too! Δ
The Shredder doesn’t feel like being haha funny some days. Send comments to shredder@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Jul 6-16, 2023.