Drought Exposes Toxic Waste Stored In Submerged Town

MOSSYROCK, Lewis County - Low lake-water levels due to the drought have exposed the long-flooded lumber and farming town of Kosmos - and hazardous waste buried there.

A resident found a 4,200-gallon underground storage tank by the lake last month. It was filled with oil, some laced with chlorinated hydrocarbons, Tacoma City Light spokesman Korte Brueckmann said yesterday.

Chlorinated hydrocarbons are found in solvents used to clean carburetors and brakes, Brueckmann said.

The tank has been dismantled and its oil hauled away for recycling after contaminants are removed, state Department of Ecology officials said. A small tank filled with water was also dug up and removed.

Ecology officials say the contaminants have not polluted any drinking water and pose no public-health threat. But worried utility officials are asking former Kosmos residents to help locate other storage tanks that can be dug up and emptied or removed.

"We don't want to go on a wild-goose chase digging holes in the lake bottom," said Sue Veseth, another Tacoma City Light spokeswoman.

Kosmos was flooded in 1968 when the utility built the $117 million Mossyrock Dam on the Cowlitz River. Tacoma City Light also owns Riffe Lake, a 12,000-acre reservoir that includes the old Kosmos town site.

The town is usually covered by lake water in the summer. During the winter the town is exposed as water is released through the dam.

This year's drought lowered the level of Riffe Lake by 35 feet, exposing the town during the summer for the first time in years.

Kosmos was once home to 500 people but now is marked only by a few concrete foundations.

Finding and cleaning all underground tanks at the site may cost the utility thousands of dollars, Brueckmann said.

The 4,200-gallon tank found last month appears to have leaked little despite being submerged for 24 years, said Dick Walker, supervisor of the Ecology Department's underground storage tank unit in southwest Washington.

"The reservoir is so big that whatever quantity did get out would be insignificant," Walker said.

Lake residents disagree. For the past 10 years, hang gliders soaring over the lake have noticed an oily sheen on the lake's eastern tip, where the town used to be, said Bob Reid, president of a citizens group, Friends of the Cowlitz. Other locals say swimmers have found oil or tar clinging to their clothes.

"There's no question in my mind it came from those tanks," Reid said.

But Walker said the oil in the lake could be from leaky cars, trucks, spilled barbecue lighter and stove fuel.

"I suspect that probably human use of that area contributes more pollution than any of these tanks currently are," he said.

No laws governed the draining and removal of old tanks when Mossyrock Dam was completed in 1968, so the state is unlikely to fine the utility, Walker said.