A resident of the Camelot neighborhood, located across the Newport Highway from the planned Costco site north of Spokane, wants a more thorough environmental review of the project.

Tom Cooney, a retired attorney, has appealed the county’s findings—called a mitigated determination of nonsignificance—that the Costco development wouldn’t affect the environment significantly.

Cooney contends the only mitigation measures required in the determination have to do with traffic and access rather than environmental concerns. He says the proposed development site is within the Superfund cleanup site for the former Kaiser Aluminum Mead plant. The site is near a plume of contaminated groundwater that isn’t meeting cleanup goals, he says.

The site also is over a designated critical aquifer recharge area, and it straddles a high-risk well protection zone, Cooney contends.

The Spokane Valley-Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer, which flows beneath much of the Spokane area and Kootenai and Bonner counties in North Idaho, is a designated sole source of drinking water for more than 500,000 people.

The county’s boilerplate environmental checklist isn’t specific enough to the site, he claims.

“There’s no questions regarding the Superfund site and the plume,” he says. “I feel it’s insufficient.”

Issaquah-based Costco Wholesale Corp. is proposing to construct a 167,300-square-foot retail warehouse structure, a 10,400-square-foot fueling station with five underground tanks and a total holding capacity of 133,400 gallons of fuel, and an 819-space parking lot.

The site is on 20 acres of land at 12020 N. Newport Highway.

John Pederson, the county planning director, says Cooney’s appeal will go before a hearing examiner on Aug. 30.

Peterson asserts the proposal likely meets environmental muster. He says the development plans comply with wellhead protection regulations.

“There’s no use of wells and no injection or use of groundwater planned,” he says.

The critical aquifer recharge designation has to do with regulating the handling of wastewater, which will be addressed by a sewer connection, Peterson says.

“It also requires storage of gasoline in a double-wall containment facility, and that’s what (the developers) showed us,” he says.

Meantime, the building permits for the Costco site are approved and ready to be issued, but as of Friday, they hadn’t been picked up, Pederson says.

Some infrastructure work, including utility installation, is underway at the site, he says.

A Costco representative couldn’t be reached immediately for comment.

Spokane-based Lydig Construction Inc. is the contractor on the $14.6 million project, and Seattle-based MG2 Corp., is designing it.

Cooney says cleanup measures for the contaminated groundwater plume have been unsuccessful.

“Such a site mandates environmental questions and answers meeting all issues of soil and water contamination,” he asserts.

The Washington state Department of Ecology’s website says the plume, which is carrying cyanide and fluoride contaminants, is 145 feet below ground and 800 to 1,500 feet wide. It’s traveling west about 2.5 miles to the Little Spokane River.

Brook Beeler, a spokeswoman for Ecology, says the Costco site isn’t directly over the plume of contaminated groundwater.

“Costco is going to go farther north than where the plume extends,” Beeler says. “Were confident the site plan isn’t going to interfere with cleanup.”

The plume cleanup efforts, however, aren’t working, and contamination has leached into portions of the aquifer and the Little Spokane River, she says.

“The plume cleanup method that was selected at the time wasn’t good enough. We’ve asked the (Kaiser) trust to work with the consultant to get more cleanup options,” she says. “We are reviewing what they have determined for the next step. The review will go through the public process.”

Cooney says he has doubts that planned stormwater treatment measures are adequate for the Costco site.

The developer proposes to construct grassy swales to capture stormwater from the store, parking lot, and roadways, and filter out contaminants.

He asserts that the short growing season in the Spokane area isn’t conducive to year-round bio-infiltration treatment of such stormwater.

“It’s a sandy area,” he says, “Stormwater will go directly into the aquifer.”

Cooney also says he’s skeptical about the plan for a multilane roundabout that’s to be constructed at the junction of a new county road within the project site and the Newport Highway, roughly midway between the highway’s Winchester Avenue junction and the Farwell Road intersection.

He asserts the roundabout will hinder access to and from the Camelot neighborhood via the Winchester Avenue/Newport Highway intersection.

“I think the roundabout is going to even out traffic perfectly so we can’t get out,” he says. “It will be more than an annoyance to get in and out of there.”

Al Gilson, eastern region spokesman for the Washington state Department of Transportation, says the construction of the roundabout will be administered and initially funded by the developer.

“We requested a traffic study. They submitted a design, and we approved it,” Gilson says.

The design went through a public comment period in May and June.

The developer will be eligible for reimbursement for roundabout construction costs through a tax-increment financing district created by the county to encourage private construction of public infrastructure to attract economic development.

The Spokane Tribe of Indians plans to build a similar roundabout west of Spokane on state Route 2 near the Spokane Tribe Casino site.

A transportation department web posting regarding the Costco and Spokane Tribe projects says, “Roundabouts are penciling out to be the recommended alternative for safely handling traffic at busy intersections, even on busy, higher-speed highways.”

Private development of the roundabouts, however, is new for the department.

“Major facilities are being built on state highways by someone other than the state,” Gilson says, adding that department inspectors will ensure the projects meet state highway standards.