LONGVIEW — Three years ago, Toutle-area resident Cathy Cochrane testified to the Cowlitz County Board of Commissioners about the health problems she believed were linked to arsenic contamination in her drinking water and requested the county implement testing requirements for private wells.
The board declined, saying that it would be government overreach.
At last week’s Cowlitz County Board of Health meeting, commissioners and other board members remained unenthusiastic about requiring testing, but showed new interest in finding ways to educate county residents about the risk of their water containing arsenic.
No final decisions were made on the subject, but board Chairman Kelly Lane requested more information for next month’s meeting about how the county could spread awareness and potentially expand existing water testing programs.
Discovering the problem
Cochrane had been unknowingly seeing signs of arsenic exposure for some time, but didn’t know to connect them to the water she and her husband got from their property’s private well, she said.
The green beans in her garden died. Her dog died from what seemed to be pancreatic cancer, and a month later, her cat died of kidney failure. In 2019, Cochrane was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
Problems also occurred with plants that didn’t die from arsenic exposure, like kale, because she often ate the food she grew while her cancer was in remission.
“I was going out in the garden and eating kale by the handfuls,” she said. “I was getting really bad stomach pain and thought it was the cancer returning, but it was the kale.”
Part of the issue is that many symptoms of long-term arsenic exposure such as cancer and diabetes can also be caused by a number of other factors, and arsenic is difficult to detect because it only stays in the body for a short time, according to the Washington State Department of Health. As a result, Cochrane said she can’t be completely certain her health problems were caused by arsenic, but it seems to be the most likely explanation.
Cochrane told The Washington Post that a neighbor warned her and her husband to test their water after testing in the neighbor’s well found that it contained 14 times the legal limit for arsenic in public water. In Cochrane’s well, the concentration was even higher in 2021 — 638 parts per billion, about 64 times the legal limit.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sets the standard for arsenic in drinking water at 10 parts per billion. According to the state department of health, drinking water in the state typically contains less than three parts per billion.
Public water systems are required to test for arsenic and other contaminants on a regular basis, but Washington does not require testing for private wells.
The cost of testing depends on which lab is used. ALS Environmental’s Kelso office has a base price of $100 that can cover a number of different tests depending on the customer’s need, while Dale McGhee & Sons Well Drilling offers arsenic testing for $65.
As soon as they found out about the contamination, Cochrane and her husband switched to bottled water for themselves and their animals, she said.
Although they were drinking the same water and eating from the same garden, Cochrane’s husband has not shown any symptoms of arsenic exposure, which she said her doctor attributed to a quirk of genetics that makes his body better able to process the arsenic safely.
A local pattern
A 2004 study in Clark County and a 2006 study in Cowlitz County found elevated levels of arsenic in many private wells and small water sources near the shared county border.
Both studies recommended the counties implement more regulation around arsenic testing. Clark County currently requires private wells to be tested for arsenic, but Cowlitz County does not.
The Silver Lake/Toutle area, on the northern side of Cowlitz County, was outside the area covered in the study. However, a number of residents have reported finding high levels of arsenic in their water as well.
William Hays, a graduate student from Central Washington University who is testing water in the Silver Lake/Toutle area for arsenic as part of his thesis project, said 18 of the 32 wells he has tested had high levels of arsenic. The affected wells were along Shadow Mountain Road and George Taylor Road and were located on top of a disused mine from 1934.
It’s difficult to tell exactly why arsenic levels are high there, Hays said. Old mines, young volcanoes like the Cascades and river basins are all risk factors that can lead to high arsenic levels in an area.
“Figuring out which one of those scenarios is contributing the arsenic is one of the things I’m teasing out,” he said.
Hays said his geologic investigation is the first of its kind in Washington, which is typically considered a low-risk area in predictive modeling looking for arsenic. Once he has figured out where the arsenic is coming from, he plans to send the information to public health officials and well drillers in the area so they can avoid future contamination.
“I think that everyone should know exactly what’s in their water,” he said. “What they do with it is up to them, but they should at least know.”
Looking for solutions
After Cochrane brought her concerns to the board of commissioners in 2021, the county began working to install a new public water line to her neighborhood. Construction is expected to be complete next year.
“I’m really hoping that they can’t retract that at this point,” Cochrane said.
She said she has not brought up her concerns about arsenic testing again because she worried that doing so would cause the commissioners to change their minds about the water line, but she still does not feel like the county is doing enough.
Testing private wells does not only protect the owner of the well, she said. It also protects anyone who visits or lives with them from being exposed to arsenic, and provides an economic benefit to all taxpayers.
“The cost (of treatment) falls to me, the person with cancer, to a certain extent, but most of it is paid for by Medicare — taxpayers, in other words,” Cochrane wrote in an email. “It would certainly benefit me not to have cancer, but it would also benefit everyone, both from an economical point of view and from an emotional one, because cancer extends into the community well beyond the pocketbook.”
At the Sept. 24 meeting, health board members leaned toward education about why owners should test their wells over mandating that testing.
Information about arsenic can currently be found on the county webpage about individual wells, but finding it requires the user to click through several menus, and it does not include information specific to Cowlitz County.
Gena James, deputy director of health and human services for the county, spoke with the board about the possibility of revamping the county’s arsenic information page and finding other ways to spread awareness about the importance of testing.
The board also discussed expanding water testing programs. The county currently has a program for group B systems, which are small water systems that serve three to 15 connections or less than 25 people. Health and Human Services Director Carole Harrison estimated there are about 100 group B systems in the county. Group A systems, in comparison, serve more than 15 connections or 25 people per day.
