By Dan Klepal
Enquirer staff writer

Delores Burke remembers a time when she watered her garden and filled her swimming pool with water from Gunpowder Creek.

That was about 40 years ago.

Burke told officials with the Kentucky Division of Water that she remembers even more clearly last winter when snowfall on the creek bank turned black from pollution running through it.

She was one of about 30 people to testify Thursday during a public hearing for a permit that, if approved, would allow the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport to continue discharging de-icing fluid into Gunpowder and Elijah creeks.

Burke, 76, said the chemical smell coming from Gunpowder is so strong that she has to keep her windows closed during summer and doesn't dare let her grandchildren go near the murky water.

Burke, 76, has lived in her home on Limaburg Creek Road for 51 years.

"It's just a little house, but it (the pollution in the creek) has been devastating for my family," she said.

The airport has been operating without a permit to discharge de-icing fluid - a chemical called ethylene glycol, which is sprayed on airliners to prevent ice from forming on, and weighing down, jets during takeoff - for more than two years.

Since the mid-1990s, the airport has spent more than $30 million on water-treatment systems and a recycling system meant to keep the majority of the fluid out of waterways.

The residents universally praised that effort, and turned their criticism on the state, which they say wrote a flawed permit that fails to protect the streams.

Almost everyone had the same basic complaints:

• The permit allows too much of the chemical to be discharged, in violation of federal law.

• It requires the airport to monitor the stream only once a week, during the winter, instead of continuously.

• It does not spell out penalties for violations.

• It moves monitoring points.

State officials will consider the comments and make a final decision on the permit in about three months.

Marc Hult, director of the Licking River Watershed Watch, said monitoring showed huge swings in the levels of dissolved oxygen, sometimes in 12-hour periods. That makes continuous monitoring of the stream all the more important, he said.

"If the airport only has to monitor once a month, they can pick their number," Hult said

Burke said she learned a thing or two at the meeting.

"All my anger was aimed at the airport," she told the state officials.

"Now I know I should be mad at you."

E-mail dklepal@enquirer.com