June 2, 2025
KOMO News
EDMONDS, Wash. — The Edmonds School District is facing a possible lawsuit over contaminants that could potentially put the community’s water source at risk.
Officials with the Olympic View Water & Sewer District (OVWSD), which provides water to Edmonds and the surrounding areas, say they’ve found unsafe levels of contaminants known as PFAS (Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances) in stormwater and soil samples near Madrona School for years, and the school district has failed to fix it.
While officials with the OVWSD said the community’s water is treated, tested, and safe to drink, they are concerned this issue could become more serious in the future.
“PFAS has been found to be a health risk for immune issues, cancer risks, and other health issues, so it’s a personal health risk to the community,” Bob Danson, general manager of OVWSD, said.
The issue centers around the system used to collect stormwater at Madrona School, which OVWSD officials said drains into the ground above the Deer Creek aquifer and could potentially risk contaminating the community’s water supply. When the school was first being built, OVWSD officials say they raised concerns about the school’s stormwater management system and its risk to the district’s water source.
The PFAS has been found in the soils,” Danson told KOMO News. “Every day that it rains, it continues to send stormwater with PFAS in it into the UIC wells that could potentially risk the aquifer. If the aquifer would potentially have the PFAS in it, then that would require treatment at least,” Danson added. “But most likely it would mean that we would have to lose that source of drinking water because of the cost to treat that PFAS.
The Edmonds School District is pushing back on these claims with district officials saying, “While some stormwater samples taken at the site have indicated elevated levels of PFAS, it is important to clarify that no samples show any impact to groundwater, let alone drinking water sources.”
School district officials maintain the district is not in violation of clean water standards and say they’ve also conducted additional environmental sampling.
“The District has been actively addressing the PFAS concerns identified in a limited area of soil, which appears to have been introduced during school construction,” Edmonds School District officials shared in a statement to KOMO News. “Since fall 2024, we have been conducting additional environmental sampling under the direction of the Washington State Department of Ecology.”
“Following Ecology’s direction, we plan to take further corrective steps this summer, after the school year concludes, including removing the likely source of PFAS contamination from the site,” district officials added.
The OVWSD notified the Edmonds School District in May they plan to sue over this issue if corrective action isn’t taken within 60 days.