Aquifer Near Monroe Still Troublesome

MONROE - Trouble is still spilling from Cadman Rock Inc.'s sand and gravel pit, where mine workers six weeks ago accidentally punctured a huge aquifer and created what could be a permanent new stream.

A natural cistern that had supplied water to eight properties went dry about 24 hours after water began gushing from a Cadman gravel slope. Cadman trucked in water for cattle and supplied bottled water for residents until a new well system came on line the day before Thanksgiving.

And last weekend, another nearby property owner discovered a well has run dry since the initial break.

Richard and Jerri Cain have two wells on their High Rock Road property south of the quarry, one for their home and quarter-horse ranch, and the other to serve a rental house. New renters arrived Saturday, and when they tried to pump water for their horses, they got sand instead.

The Cains' other well also has dropped more than 2 feet, Jerri Cain said. Cadman is providing water for the renters and their horses and plans to deepen both wells by more than 30 feet.

Cadman already has poured $500,000 into fixing the problems, including digging a new well to supply water to neighboring residents, said Rod Shearer, the company's operations manager.

The new 130-foot well taps into the same aquifer that fed the cistern, and its water is transported through the same pipeline.

Experts have discovered the aquifer measures 3 miles long and 1 mile wide, far larger than originally suspected. Although a Cadman consultant had been studying water sources in the area before the break, that aquifer had gone undetected.

At 7 p.m. today, the county is sponsoring a community meeting in the Pavilion at the Evergreen State Fairgrounds in Monroe to answer residents' questions about the long-term effects of the aquifer break.

Also under discussion will be future Cadman operations, for which it has filed permit applications with the county. Cadman has operated since 1984 without county permits, mining sand and gravel from its 135-acre quarry and basalt from an adjacent 320-acre mountainside property owned by the state Department of Corrections.

"It's an awesome expansion," quarry neighbor John Hampton said of the basalt operation. "They're just going to decimate the entire mountainside."

When the water table finishes leveling out, it probably will be half of its original depth, said Tom Roe of Snohomish County's community-development division. About 40 wells lie within a 1-mile radius of Cadman, he said.

The Cains are members of People for the Preservation of Tualco Valley, a group whose membership has grown to more than 383 since its creation last year. Until the aquifer problem, the group's energy was focused on Cadman's ongoing effort to win an operating permit from the county.

Until Cadman applied for permits in 1992, nobody, not even county officials, realized the quarry had been operating without county permits since 1984, although it did have surface-mining permits issued by the state Department of Natural Resources. Cadman's ownership changed in 1991, and its new owners sought the proper permits.

Cadman is in the midst of a lengthy environmental study to obtain those permits. The question probably will be settled in about 18 months, when the environmental reviews are complete and Cadman's case is decided first by the county hearing examiner and then by the County Council.

Yesterday the county served Cadman with two formal notices and orders, setting timetables for the quarry's compliance with the permitting process. Cadman is to submit an application for a shoreline permit by Feb. 10 and obtain a conditional-use permit by June 1995.

In February the Tualco Valley group filed a document disputing portions of a preliminary Cadman environmental study.

"I've been addressing these issues for over a year, and now it's personal. Now it's real personal," Jerri Cain said.