Sprinklers spray water over Northwest Alloys field near Addy.

State to determine if irrigation is illegal

BY JAMIE HENNEMAN
S-E Staff Reporter

    The site of the former North¬west Alloys magnesium plant in Addy is currently being in¬vestigated for their water rights usage, according to offi¬cials at the Washington State Department of Ecology.
    The plant that closed in 2001 is surrounded by a buffer of 270 acres of hayfield that is currently under pro¬duction. The Department of Ecology is currently trying to determine if the water being used on the hay fields is being applied illegally.
    “Northwest Alloys does have two industrial water rights for the facility that were initially used to run the plant,” said DOE Water Resources Pro¬gram Section Manager Keith Stoffel. “We are trying to de¬termine if they can legally use that water for irrigation be¬cause water rights used for industrial purposes and water rights used for agriculture purposes are considered sepa¬rate.”
    If the plant is in fact using the water to raise a hay crop that will be sold for profit, NWA would be in violation of their current water rights us¬age, said Stoffel. The DOE is currently searching their re¬cords for a “letter from the 1970s” that may prove the in¬dustrial water rights were for a dual use.
    In the meantime, ALCOA (the parent company of Northwest Alloys) North American Public Strategy Manager Jodie Read, the hay crop being harvested near the plant site is currently being sold to the Washington State Department of Natural Re¬sources.
    “ALCOA is selling the entire hay crop from the property to the DNR for one dollar and will be used to feed wildlife,” said Read. “The crop is not being grown to make a profit, instead it is being essentially given to the state so the water and land being used can benefit the public.”
    However, the DOE has yet to determine if that arrange¬ment meets the restrictions of the water rights associated with the plant.
    “We haven’t determined if the hay is going to market by definition or if it is simply a byproduct of the remediation process,” said Stoffel, referring to the process by which the plant will dispose of its wastewater and lagoon water from the site.

NWA getting ‘special treatment’?

    The reason this issue hits hard in the local area is be¬cause local landowners have been waiting for decades to have pending water right ap¬plications issued by the DOE.
    “We have a huge line of peo¬ple that have been waiting for the DOE to process their wa¬ter rights applications since 1993,” said Merrill Ott, a Ste¬vens County Commissioner and long time member of the local WIRA 59 Watershed board. “We have spent thou¬sands of volunteer hours on water rights issues in our area and if a big company is getting special treatment, there is a problem there.”
    Department of Ecology re¬cords show there are over 50 applicants with pending water right applications in the WIRA 59 watershed, including local municipalities.
DOE and the WIRA 59 group have been in ongoing negotia¬tions this summer regarding opening the WIRA 59 basin to those water rights applica¬tions, but with limited suc¬cess. Until resolve is reached between the two groups, many water users will have to stand in line before being able to le¬gally turn on their spigots.

Is the water safe?

    Along with the legality of the water usage at Northwest Al¬loys, there are some unan¬swered questions regarding the mysterious deaths of over 60 dairy cows fed hay from the NWA fields in 2006.
    According to records from the Washington State De¬partment of Agriculture, Ron and Judy Hentges were hay¬ing the 270 acres owned by Northwest Alloys to produce hay and silage for their 160 cows at their dairy a few miles from the plant.
    In March of 2007, the WSDA investigated a “large number of dead cows” at the Hentges dairy.
According to the report, ”Mr. Hentges reported that he had fed a single ration including grass haylage and grass hay from a 270 acre piece of prop¬erty he has leased from AL¬COA. He reported that the hay field was irrigated from a ‘mill pond’ at the plant and when he started feeding hay he has harvested in the summer of 2006, the cows’ milk produc¬tion had declined from 65 lb. per day average to a 27 lb. per day.”
    Moreover, the cows at the dairy began to die. At the time of the WSDA investigation a pile of bones from 40 cows was examined, along with 20 cow carcasses that Hentges had been instructed not to bury until the issue was re¬solved.
    Early media reports on the dairy incident had suggested poor management, as was re¬flected in the WSDA Case Re¬port.
    “Several cows were observed to have mastitis and some had pus draining from their ud¬ders while others had udder abscesses that had broken through the udder skin and were draining,” the report noted.
    Hentges also told the WSDA that he could not afford to purchase dry material for the stalls nor the fuel for the tractor to clean the pens. Cow carcasses were not moved from the cow pen because the “mud was too deep.”
    A secondary report noted, “Some of the cows were quite thin and emaciated.”
    Prior to the cow deaths, the WSDA had issued the Hentges a “notice of repeat violations” during its inspection of the dairy in December of 2006.

State said testing showed no abnormal results

    All of these items in addition to the fact the state said their testing results showed “no concentrations of any heavy metals” in the cows that the state autopsied lead many to believe the cattle deaths were due to a “dirty dairy.”
    However, the reason the cows died remained a mys¬tery.
    Washington State Veterinar¬ian Leonard Eldridge said in an April 2007 press release,” We have not been able to identify a common cause of death of these animals. Frankly, we may never know specifically what killed the animals that died before the start of this investigation.”
    However, the testing pre¬formed by the state on the Hentges hay and animals was not without its challenges. WSDA records obtained by the Statesman-Examiner show that there were some mistakes in the testing, including mis-sent laboratory packages and “extreme differences” in the results obtained by state and independent labs.
    Additionally, the WSDA re¬cords show that when Hent¬ges began feeding hay from the fields and his milk pro¬duction began to decline that “representatives from Wash¬ington State University (WSU)” came to the farm and took samples.
    In the records Hentges said that the was “unhappy that they (WSU) shared the results with Alcoa before they shared the results with him.”

DOE decision this week

    While questions regarding the safety of the feed from the NWA fields may continue to be asked, the DOE said they hope to have a decision on the water rights usage by the end of the week.
    “If it turns out they are in violation, we have the ability to issue a cease and desist or¬der regarding the usage,” said DOE Representative Stoffel.