Skunks culprit for stinky water in Soap Lake

SOAP LAKE — Soap Lake Mayor Wayne Hovde set the record straight last night for those who have complained about the foul-aroma water that has been flowing into residents' homes for the last week or so.

"Yes, it was true, it was a skunk," Hovde said, after four residents showed up at the city council meeting on Wednesday night looking for answers and an explanation.

Hovde explained it like this, "A skunk got into the catch basin. Then the air was sucked back up out of that. It brought down the odor into the water, through the air being on top of the tank."

Finally, he added, "So, when they said skunk, it was a skunk."

Dead skunk, that is, but Hovde said the tank was drained and flushed out and that the decomposing critter in the ground level catch basin had "no bearing on the safety" of the water residents were using at home. He said the skunk was able to get into the catch basin after someone had vandalized the screen designed to prevent any animals from crawling in.

Several skunks have been living near the well, Hovde said.

Dan Sander, the Washington State Department of Health's regional manager, confirmed Thursday morning that skunks were the culprits for the stench. Sander said the city had contacted the department and reported that a dead skunk and live skunk were in an overflow line and drain line. He said the city had drained the water and flushed out the tank.

"We thought this was a pretty unique incident," Sander said. "We hadn't heard the skunk story before this."

Gerald Campbell, an environmental health director with the Grant County Health District, said that Soap Lake water has stunk before because of a natural occurring sulfur smell. Campbell said he had not been out to check on the water for this particular incident and was not aware that Soap Lake's water had a skunk smell. He will be checking on it today.

"I don't think a smell is going to hurt you, it's just air molecules," Campbell said.

Irvin and Marie Neil, of Second Avenue NE in Soap Lake, said they live about four blocks from the source of the stench and have smelled skunk in all of their water for about a week. They said that they have resorted to bottled water because they haven't been able to drink anything out of their faucet.

"They're starting to get it out," Marie Neil said of the dead skunk scented water.

"It definitely was odoriferous though," her husband Irvin Neil said.

Mayor Hovde said that 10 complaints have been received about the water.

Soap Lake resident Birdie Moore showed up to tell the council that this is the second time this has happened and that she would like to know what the city was going to do to prevent it from happening again.

"Protection has been installed so that it won't happen again, and no, it has not ever happened before," Hovde said.

"Last time, it was a little over a week before the smell went away," Birdie Moore said.

Another resident demanded that residents be notified if this happens again. She said she was worried about the safety of her children and others.

"Just so I would know, as a parent, what I am feeding my children out of my sink," she said. "It was kind of worrisome for me to have this."

"Never thought about that," Hovde said, of providing notification to residents. "But we didn't know what it was until we found it either."