U.S. Water News Online
YAKIMA, Wash. -- A former Grandview hop farmer has reached a $3.5 million settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency over cleanup of an herbicide from his property.
Dan Alexander, owner of Yakima Chief Ranches, agreed to reimburse the federal agency $3.05 million for the cost of soil cleanup at the farm. He also will pay $500,000 for cleanup of 1,600 tons of contaminated soil left on the 4-acre site.
In 1998, the banned herbicide Dinoseb was found in soil on Alexander's property. The chemical contaminated two nearby residential wells at a level 50 times the allowable limit, according to the state Ecology Department.
``This settlement wraps up five years of litigation and will ensure that the work that needs to be done will be done to restore the soil and aquifer,'' Ecology's site manager, Tom Mackie, said.
Dinoseb, used on a variety of crops to kill downy mildew, was banned in 1986 after high doses were found to cause fertility problems and birth defects in lab rats.
Alexander began cleaning the site in 1998, but the state eventually called in the EPA to continue the work. The federal agency has already removed 12,530 tons of contaminated soil from the property.
Ecology spokeswoman Joye Redfield-Wilder said there is no immediate timetable for completing the cleanup, but that groundwater monitoring will continue in the area for several years.
The settlement ends Alexander's appeal of a 2002 ruling by Benton County Superior Court Judge Craig Matheson, who ruled the farmer was liable for the cleanup.
Alexander and his wife, Harriet, argued that they had properly applied the herbicide, from 1976 to 1985, in accordance with existing law. They sought protection under the Model Toxics Control Act, which shields farmers from liability for lawful use of farm chemicals if it's later determined the chemicals could pose a threat.
But in 2002, Matheson ruled that their handling of Dinoseb endangered people and the environment.
``Judge Matheson's decision is a real setback to the ag industry in the Yakima Valley,'' said Alexander, who still owns the hop farm but now lives on Bainbridge Island near Seattle.
``If you're a farmer and you've been using an herbicide, totally lawfully, and ... then they pass the law that makes it unlawful and you have to pay for that, that seems to me a little bit unreasonable to make a farmer liable for that.''
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