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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

BNSF forms plan for cleanup in Hillyard

HILLYARD – Years of industrial activity on a vacant former rail yard in Hillyard left 9.6 acres so seriously contaminated with heavy metals that state and federal officials two years ago warned against letting children play in the vicinity.

There has also been concern that wind-blown dust off the site poses an additional hazard to residents near the contamination between the 4800 and 5300 blocks of North Ferrall Street.

BNSF Railway Co., the property owner, reported the toxic waste in 2002, and entered the state’s voluntary cleanup program in August 2004.

Today, BNSF is in the final stages of winning regulatory approval for a major cleanup of wastes believed to have been left by the storing and discarding of batteries at shops adjacent to the former Great Northern Railway yard.

“Our goal is to come up with a plan to protect human health and the environment,” said Gus Melonas, regional spokesman for the nationwide BNSF Railway, which includes the old Great Northern line.

Melonas declined to say how much BNSF would be spending on the cleanup.

In 2005, the state Department of Health and the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Control warned families living near the site to keep their children away even though 8,640 cubic yards of the most tainted soil had already been covered and fenced off three years earlier.

The railroad hired an engineering consultant to survey the extent of the contamination and come up with a cleanup plan.

Soil at the site was found to have between 26.5 and 35,400 parts per million of lead contamination. Arsenic and cadmium were also found. The average of 2,301 ppm is more than twice the state’s cleanup standard for industrially zoned land.

The cleanup calls for scooping up 31,500 cubic yards of contaminated soil and combining it with the 8,640 cubic yards of stockpiled waste and placing the combined soil behind a fence beneath a specially designed cover to prevent it from blowing around or being leached into groundwater.

A deed restriction would prevent future digging across the site without authorization. A report by GeoEngineers of Spokane said that once the land is reclaimed it has potential for industrial activity or for parking.

Future construction of a North Spokane freeway just to the west of the cleanup site could be accomplished safely, the report said.

Once gathered, the toxic waste would be covered with a 40-mil-thick impermeable polyethylene membrane with up to two feet of clean soil and grass on top of it, creating a containment cell, or “cap,” to prevent rain or snow melt from moving the material and leaching it downward to the aquifer some 150 feet below ground.

In addition, the containment cell would have a system for collecting rainwater flowing off it to keep the water from getting to the waste.

Neighborhood leaders said the cleanup is a first step in reclaiming environmental problems stemming from historic rail and industrial uses in Hillyard.

David Griswold, chairman of the Hillyard Neighborhood Council, said the council is recommending that North Ferrall, a gravel street, be paved or oiled regularly by the city to contain any contaminated dust in the street.

He said there are about a dozen families living in the vicinity of the site, including one young family across the street.

The city of Spokane last November gave its environmental go-ahead for the cleanup.

Patti Carter, regional manager of the voluntary cleanup program for the state Department of Ecology, said the consultant for BNSF has been asked to perform additional tests to ensure that the proposed remediation is appropriate for the site. Regulators want to make sure that contaminants are not susceptible to migrating through the soil.

Otherwise, she said BNSF’s willingness to undergo voluntary cleanup has resulted in a faster and less costly process.

“I think they are trying to do the right thing out there,” she said. “It would be good to get this one cleaned up.”

Hillyard was named after James J. Hill, who brought the Great Northern Railway and its western regional rail service center yard to the area in 1892. The lead cleanup area is in a location that had been dotted with shops during active years of the yard serving the GN, a transcontinental line that was completed in 1893 and ran through Spokane from Duluth and St. Paul, Minn., to Seattle and Everett.

The GN, which used a mountain goat in its identifying emblem, was merged with the Northern Pacific; Spokane, Portland & Seattle; and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy railroads in 1970 to create the former Burlington Northern Railroad. In 1995, the BN and Santa Fe lines merged to form the BNSF.

At Hillyard’s former rail maintenance center, the main “Goat Shop” once produced large steam locomotives, including a class known as Mallets. The center was dismantled starting in the 1980s after the BN merger. Hillyard served the rail facility and its families and was at one time a separate town before incorporating into Spokane in 1924.

The oldest building in the Hillyard National Historic District is the 1893 Sheehan Boarding House, built by rail yard worker Jerry Sheehan at 3112 E. Olympic Ave.