At a coffeehouse meeting on Wednesday, Public Works Director Martin Pastucha was reportedly not forthcoming about where he was getting the information that seems to disagree with Renton’s 1988 and 2020 scientific wellhead protection studies (such as the extent of Renton’s aquifer).  At one point he said only that it was his “hydrologist.”  My wife who was in attendance specifically questioned Mr. Pastucha about his assertion that there was minimal risk to our water system because monitoring wells would let the City know of problems before people drank the contaminated water.  “Yes, but how would you then clean it out?” she asked, according to the accounts of her and two friends. “You can’t just stick a sponge down there and pull the contaminants out” my wife said.

Mr. Pastucha assertively replied that yes you can indeed clean it out (as if it is routine).

He never offered a name, report, or company that was giving him his information, beyond saying a hydrologist.  When I heard about this conversation, it reminded me of the “top men” scene from “Raiders of the Lost Ark” that I have linked above.

I wasn’t born yesterday, and I realize Mr. Pastucha might be able to find a subordinate employee who submits to telling him what he wants to hear, and it’s not my intent to throw such an employee under the bus.  But if we are going to put Renton’s wellfield at risk, after all the time and money we’ve put into them, I would like to see published technical reports, with data similar to the wellhead studies, instead of stories and memos from Martin Pastucha.  Mr. Pastucha has Business and Public Administration degrees, but not the engineering degree held by his predecessor when the wellhead studies were commissioned.

For those who have never seen the results of contamination in a wellfield, suffice it to say getting the toxins out of a wellfield is like trying to get pee out of a pool.   It’s not going to happen overnight.  Some asphalt toxins like benzene are dangerous at six parts per billion, and are not able to be filtered out.

Cleaning will typically rely on flushing, often for months or years, and this obviously only works if the source of the pollution has been removed.  I remember a time on Council when this happened in a downtown well due to a dry cleaning chemical, and it took months to get the source eliminated and the well back on line.