EPA reports no contaminants in the air, but water is a concern | Longview Plant Implosion Update

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:01]Good afternoon everyone. My name is Brooks Stanfield. B R O Ks S Tan F I L D. I'm a federal onseene coordinator with the US Environmental Protection Agency.

[00:00:15]Um, in addition to the really, really critical complicated work of recovering the workers of this facility safely, this incident command is also focused on protecting human health in the environment.

[00:00:33]Um, I have the privilege to represent the United States Environmental Protection Agency and work alongside of our partners at the Washington Department of Ecology, uh, members of the Kalis Indian tribe, the Yakma Nation, and several other state, federal, and local agencies, including the Coast Guard, the city of Long View, the Cowitz Dyke Improvement District, just to name a few.

[00:00:59]We're all working very hard to ensure that the health and environment of this community is protected as we manage this delicate operation here on the on the plant facility. So I'm going to talk about how we're doing this in a couple of ways. Two two to three main focus areas of this work. So first of all start with the the easy part which is air quality. We got here on Tuesday, EPA arrived and immediately began deploying air monitors to make sure that the air both on-site and migrating offsite is was safe for the community to breathe.

[00:01:34]The main the main contaminant we were concerned with was hydrogen sulfide.

[00:01:39]Knowing what we know about this facility and the contaminants involved, I can report to you we've been monitoring 24 hours a day since we arrived here. And not only have we not seen any exceedences of health criteria, we have not actually had a detection of hydrogen sulfide or any of the other air contaminants we we might have encountered. So that's really good news.

[00:02:00]But we will continue on with that air monitoring operation for the foreseeable future.

[00:02:06]The other main human health and environmental issue that we are are managing and and dedicating a lot of resources toward is the result of the discharge of high pH costic liquid from the facility through the storm drain and into the ditch on the north side of Industrial Way here just across the street. So obviously there was a large amount of volume that was released from the tank. So in addition to fire water that entered into a storm drain, it ended up discharging into this industrial d or the the ditch on the north side of industrial way. That ditch is connected to the to a dyke network that moves throughout the entire community of Long View. It is it literally runs through people's backyards. Uh people have access to it.

[00:02:56]People dogs can swim in it. It's obviously something where uh there is a a risk for people to come in contact with that that liquid um if we don't prevent them from from doing so. So the in initial days we saw elevated pH levels that would have been Tuesday we saw elevated pH levels in the in the ditch mostly localized to the outfall near the facility but over time we saw that pH uh migrating through the system.

[00:03:25]One major concern we have with this besides the immediate health health or uh safety of residents is that this ditch sits on top of a sole source aquafer and a wellfield where the the city of Long View gets its its primary drinking water source from. So, in in consultation with the utilities here, we've been uh developing a plan to flush that high pH liquid away from that well field over the last couple of days. We began those operations yesterday. That that strategy involves two two main parts which one is drawing water fresh water from the Kalat River on the east side of this this network and pushing the water west by diluting and and flooding that that and flushing that water to the west. At the same time, we are opening up two discharge pumps that discharge water to the Columbia River on the west side of this network. they are pulling that water to the west and discharging water to the Columbia River.

[00:04:33]What of course so this is a primarily an effort to get that water away from the drinking water wells. Uh my colleague here Chris Collins from the city of of Long View can speak to um the the cleanliness of the water and the safety of the water to drink. He's going to tell you that it is indeed safe to drink and they're monitoring it very diligently, but it's something that we don't want to risk. So, we're we're taking this threat seriously and pushing this water to the west. As we push it to the west, we are also monitoring the pH of that water to me. Make sure that any water that does get discharged to the Columbia River is in compliance with basically neutral water standards.

[00:05:17]trying to get as below a pH of nine to get it to a normal pH that we would see in this system. Right now at la the last report we got was at the two discharge points. One was discharging pH water of a pH of 7 and the other was water at a pH of 8.5. We're going to continue monitoring that. If we hit a pH of nine, we have some additional strategies we can employ to bring that pH down.

[00:05:45]Um I think the only other thing I want to say is that the ditches we are we are monitoring those. There are still areas with elevated pH in in the in the water there and we are continue and stay out of those ditches and dikes.

[00:06:08]And um the last thing is that if if people want more information the Washington Department of Ecology has set up an incident website where you can get regular updates. The easiest way to locate that website is by going to Washington Department of Eciesy's Facebook page.