NACHEZ COUPLE EXPOSE METH BUNKER BENEATH THEIR PROPERTY

Cyndi Furstenau started hearing rumors about her ranch-style Naches home
just a few months after the deal closed three years ago.

The first murmurs came from a woman that Cyndi's husband, Marc, ran into at
the store. Then from her neighbors - then from strangers who'd heard she'd
moved in.

They all said the same thing: The Furstenaus' property used to house a
major methamphetamine lab.

Cyndi was immediately concerned, but she had no idea then - she couldn't
have, really - how those first disturbing whispers would eventually lead
her on a quest that would haunt her nearly every waking moment.

She says she's now living a nightmare, and has no idea how long it will last.

The nightmare could have been avoided if Cyndi had simply ignored those
early mutterings - pretended not to hear the stories about steady flows of
late-night revelers who used to visit the house nightly, an underground
tunnel system and a hideout bunker that had once been in the back yard.

After all, no one would suspect that the quiet horse property situated in
the hills south of Naches was ever used as a drug lab. She could keep her
suspicions to herself. Legally, she could just walk away.

'A Conscience Thing'

But Cyndi says she never seriously considered that as an option.

"It's a conscience thing," she explains. Chemicals and byproducts from the
meth manufacturing process can cause a number of serious health problems,
and are especially dangerous for children. How could Cyndi let her
grandchildren play on her property if she thought it was contaminated? How
could she sell the house to someone else knowing their children might play
in toxic dirt and become sick? If someone in her family became ill, how
would Cyndi know the house wasn't to blame?

She had to know the truth.

If she could find proof that a drug lab had existed on her property, she
might be able to sue the home's prior owner for the expense of cleaning it
up. That cost can range anywhere from a few thousand dollars to hundreds of
thousands of dollars, depending on the severity of the contamination.

Either way, if she knew for certain whether there'd been a lab, she'd have
peace of mind.

"I'd rather just clean it and live with the consequences," she says of the
potential financial strain.

So about two years ago, she started investigating - and she's still going.

She's had help from a devoted group of girlfriends who have scoured court
records, interviewed criminals and pored over aerial photos of the
Furstenaus' home looking for proof of drug activity.

After a year of searching, snooping and probing, the women finally
determined which areas of the property to test.

Terrified of what she might find

Earlier this year, environmental crews came with backhoes and started
tearing into the areas the Furstenaus thought were most likely to yield
evidence of meth manufacturing.

During the dig, crews uncovered an underground bunker adjacent to the
property - just as Cyndi's research had indicated they would.

She was excited to find something, yet terrified of what the find meant.

The tab for the excavation and subsequent testing had reached about $5,000.

The first round of tests - and only round, so far - showed evidence of
methamphetamine contamination, but not the severity or exact location. More
extensive testing will be required before the Furstenaus can make any
reasonable estimate on cleanup costs.

Investigators don't even know whether the contamination is from smoking
meth - which might be a simple cleanup process - or manufacturing it, which
would likely be more extensive and costly more to clean up, their attorney,
Jay Carroll, says.

"Their situation in my estimation is kind of a Catch-22 from the standpoint
of they don't have a whole bunch of money lying around to go spend
thousands and thousands of dollars on testing, and yet they need to do that
to find out what's wrong with the property," he says.

Ted Silvestri, solid and hazardous waste specialist with the Yakima County
Health District, hears from a "steady trickle" of Yakima County residents -
about one a year - who have situations similar to the Furstenaus.

Cyndi Furstenau digs in a hillside behind her barn on May 10, looking for a
reported tunnel that was part of a drug-manufacturing operation on her
property near Naches. Of those calls, he says the Furstenaus' is the first
to turn up any evidence of actual contamination.

Contacting the health district is the first step property owners should
take if they suspect their home is contaminated, says Gordon Kelly,
environmental health director for the district.

Health district experts can offer advice and referrals for testing, if
necessary. In some cases, environmental health specialists will perform a
property inspection and preliminary field test to identify potential
contamination. However, if those experts find evidence of methamphetamine,
they're required by state law to start a cleanup process. That means a
permanent note on the property's title and a potentially costly bill for
the property owner.

Finding, suing who's responsible

Property owners can sue whoever's responsible for the contamination, but
that's an expensive process, too, and the perpetrator often lacks the means
to pay.

"It does put the innocent party many times between a rock and a hard
place," Kelly says.

Frustration with their situation led Furstenau and her friends to contact
Rep. Jim Clements, R-Selah.

Clements says he's sympathetic to property owners like Furstenau as well as
rental property tenants who have no way of knowing - unless there's a
police record - whether their homes were ever drug labs. He'd like to see a
cost-effective and legal way for potential homeowners and tenants to be
able to test houses before moving in.

"I don't quite know where I'm going with this, but I know where I'd like to
go," Clements says. "I think after what I've seen, there's an epidemic and
we're just going to have to deal with it and put the responsibility on
people where it needs to be."

Testing and cleaning up contaminated meth sites is less complicated when
there's a police record. If the drug manufacturers are caught, then there's
a public record that can help a property owner prove damages. That makes it
easier to sue the responsible party.

It's more difficult when there's no record, as was the case with Cyndi
Furstenau's property.

Some safeguards are already in place - though many of those safeguards have
loopholes.

For example, a question on standard seller disclosure statements filled out
prior to sales asks whether the property being sold has "ever been used as
an illegal drug manufacturing site" based on the seller's "actual knowledge
of the property."

Dorothy Ennis, who owned the house the Furstenaus bought, answered "no" to
that question.

The Ennises had done some investigating of their own, but couldn't verify
there'd been any drug use on the property, says their attorney, James Berg.

"They went through quite a process to find out if there was evidence" of
drug use on the property, he says. "They were suspicious and couldn't find
anything."

A letter to the Furstenaus from the Ennises' first attorney, Stanley Pratt,
states that Dorothy's son, Stuart, suspected that his brother, Michael,
might be dealing drugs or stolen property. Michael Ennis lived in a mobile
home on the property while his parents lived in the house, and he died in 2003.

The letter says Stuart Ennis contacted law enforcement, which inspected and
surveyed the property but never found any proof of drug dealing or
manufacturing.

The Ennises, longtime owners of the property, "were concerned about
possible drug dealing, but are not aware of any meth lab or drug
manufacturing on the premises and have never had any reason to suspect a
lab or manufacturing was being conducted on the property," the letter states.

But does that mean it didn't happen? And even if it did, are the Ennises
responsible for the cleanup costs if they didn't know?

It could be some time before those questions are answered.

On July 22, the Furstenaus filed a complaint in Yakima County Superior
Court asking that the Ennises pay costs associated with any contamination
found on the property.

That triggered a legal procedure that could take months or years to resolve.

And once it comes, there's no guarantee the resolution will be what the
Furstenaus hope for. They may never be able to prove - or disprove - the
rumors they started hearing two years ago.

In that case, Cyndi could be right back where she started.

She's expecting a lengthy, difficult process. She knows there are no
guarantees, but she can't imagine doing it any other way.

"I'm not going to back down," she says.