Seattle waterfront park formerly toxic mess

SEATTLE – With a sweeping view of the city’s skyline at his back, the head of the federal Superfund program could hardly stop grinning Tuesday as he strolled through a waterfront park on land that once was a toxic mess.

It’s been 11 years since the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency listed the area surrounding a former West Seattle wood-treatment plant as one of the most heavily polluted industrial waste sites in the country.

Now the bulk of the cleanup job is finished.

About 40 other sites across the country have reached the same “construction completion” milestone this year, said Mike Cook, director of the Office of Superfund Remediation and Technology Innovation.

The cleanup of the Pacific Sound Resources site didn’t cost taxpayers anything, Cook said, beaming another smile.

The $38 million tab was covered by the Port of Seattle, which bought the property in 1994, and a trust set up to liquidate the assets of the company that last owned the plant.

Congress created the Superfund program in 1980 as a way to force polluters to clean up the messes they leave behind.

It rarely makes economic sense to buy contaminated land, but in this case, the land was crucial to the port’s plan to redevelop a rail yard so it could move more containers to and from ships and trains.

The port demolished the old plant, dug up the worst of the polluted soil, hauled it away for disposal, capped it with an impermeable membrane then sealed it off with asphalt. It built an underground wall of clay-like material 40 feet deep to prevent carcinogenic creosote and other toxic chemicals from seeping into Elliott Bay.

Most pleasing to the eye, it built a public park and began restoring a small beach. Wallace Reid, the site’s project manager, said the plan is to open the beach to the public once grass and other plants for nearshore birds take root.

B.J. Cummings, coordinator of a community coalition overseeing cleanup of the nearby Duwamish River, declined to comment on the quality of the cleanup itself, but applauded the idea of not only cleaning up pollution, but giving the public access to the land.

“We’re looking for habitat improvements. We’re looking for public access and public use along with the cleanup, and that’s what’s happened at Pacific Sound Resources,” Cummings said.

The last major step in the project, completed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in February, was covering nearly 60 acres of polluted sediment beyond the shoreline with clean fill. The “cap” is as thick as 240 feet in some places, but just 1 foot thick toward the outer edges of the site.

After checking that all the work had met the standards outlined in its cleanup plan, the EPA’s regional office published its preliminary close-out report for the site last Friday.

The agency will keep monitoring the site over the next few years, taking samples of the sediment cap to make sure it stays free of pollution.