By SUE RYAN
News staff writer
July 30, 2007

Columbia Gorge Community College faces a higher bill for the Indian Creek campus in Hood River after a recent find.

Todd Construction discovered oil contamination while excavating an access road into the site.

“We’re looking at $10,000 to $20,000 more,” said Dennis Whitehouse, the college’s executive director of facility services.

The workers found one area of soil that had been contaminated with oil while excavating the route July 6. The access road is an extension from Pacific Avenue and will be called College Way, which will end at the new building.

Early estimates of a few dozen cubic yards eventually turned into approximately 450 cubic yards, all of which has now been removed from the site and taken to a licensed disposal facility, the Wasco County landfill. Workers finished removing the soil July 13.

The Department of Environmental Quality responded to the find. Cleanup project manager Bud Roman, based in The Dalles office, said response to the incident was excellent from all parties.

“The construction company on discovering this took a very proactive approach,” Roman said. “They stopped their work on the area and shifted their people to work on another area.”

The spill stretched laterally about 100 feet and vertically three feet under the existing surface. Crews took out the main area of saturated soil. Some contaminated soil remains on the edges.

“There is going to be some left under the banks and parking lot but what is left is of an acceptable level,” Roman said.

Whitehouse said the contamination was confined to a localized area, and did not extend near Indian Creek.

Construction workers also located the apparent source of the contamination, an old pipe coming onto the college property from an adjoining parcel. The pipe had not been used for a number of years.

Hood River resident and businessman Russ Paddock owns the parcel and currently leases it to Hood River Mercury Ford.

However, the contamination did not come from that car dealership. Whitehouse indicated Paddock was not aware of the pipe, noting that the parcel has been leased to several different individuals during past years.

Roman said that Paddock updated the property when he purchased it several years ago by cementing all old pipes shut and hooking the property up to the city’s sewer system. Roman said it appears from initial examination based on the age of the pipe that the contamination happened sometime in the 1970s or 1980s.

Whitehouse said that the college was required to try and recover part of the cost but said he can not yet say who was responsible or how that issue would be specifically addressed.

The college paid $1.3 million in the summer of 2005 for the 12.5 acre site at the corner of 12th and Pacific Avenue. Roman said the college did have site studies done prior to purchasing the property but it did not turn up the pipe or contamination.

“They did their Phase 1 out there, an investigation or history of what it’s been used for and they did go in and put down some holes looking for pesticides,” Roman said. “But the pipe just remained hidden during those tests.”

Meanwhile, the construction project proceeds on schedule. Contractors will finish the parking area for the future campus classrooms by August, and have completed the curbside portion of the lot.

CGCC broke ground on the campus May 8. The facility is the first permanent campus for the college in Hood River.