Geiger Heights Housing Area

The 77-acre Geiger Heights Housing Area includes 131 single-family and duplex dwellings that were built in the 1950s as housing for the Fairchild Airforce Base. Each unit was heated by fuel oil stored in 300-gallon, single-walled underground tanks. 

The underground tanks were removed in 1994 when heating fuel was changed to natural gas. Nine tanks had leaked fuel oil to soil and groundwater, and samples taken during excavation found diesel at levels requiring cleanup.

The property owners cleaned up the site between 1994 and 2015. About 1,755 cubic yards of soil were excavated and disposed offsite after 37 borings were drilled to discover the extent of contamination. Twelve groundwater monitoring wells were installed in 2000, and sampled quarterly through 2015. The last four monitoring results met state standards for groundwater.

In 2016, Ecology evaluated the cleanup and decided that the site no longer poses a threat to people or the environment. We held a public comment period June 13 through July 13, 2016, to remove it from the Hazardous Sites List, a statewide list of contaminated sites that have been ranked according to their level of potential hazard and cleanup status. No comments were received, so we removed the site from the list.