Port prepares for cleanup and construction on East Bay land

About 2,000 cubic yards of soil may be contaminated, will need removal

By John Dodge | The Olympian • Published March 24, 2009

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OLYMPIA – The Port of Olympia is poised to begin building the roads and utilities to serve its 13-acre East Bay redevelopment project, cleaning up contaminated soils along the way.

To learn more

The state Department of Ecology has scheduled an open house from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. April 1 at Washington Middle School, 3100 Cain Road S.E., Olympia, to discuss and answer questions about the East Bay redevelopment toxics cleanup project on Port of Olympia property.

The public comment period runs through April 16 on two work plans to complete a partial cleanup and investigation of the 13-acre site north of State Avenue and west of Marine View Drive, including removal of contaminated soil in road and utility rights-of-way being built for the project.

Documents are available for review at Olympia Timberland Regional Library and Ecology's toxics cleanup Web site at www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/tcp/sites/eastbayredev/eastbayredev_hp.htm.

The property is the future home of the Hands On Children's Museum, a public plaza and possible combinations of office, retail, hotel and residential space.

The work plan agreed to by the port and state Department of Ecology deals mainly with handling soils. It's available for public review and comment through April 16.

About 20,000 cubic yards of soil will be excavated as roads and utility lines are constructed between May 2009 and January 2010 on 2.5 acres of public rights-of-way, Port environmental program manager Joanne Snarski said.

Roughly 2,000 cubic yards of soil, or 200 dump truck loads, could be contaminated enough to require special disposal. Much of the rest could be reused beneath the paved areas of the road and in utility corridors, she said.

The infrastructure work will support urban renewal of the property bounded by State Avenue to the south, Marine View Drive to the east and Jefferson Street to the west.

But first the port will spend roughly another year investigating and developing a cleanup plan for the property, which supported timber-related industries from 1888 to 1968, leaving behind a legacy of petroleum products, heavy metals, solvents, PCBs and dioxins in the soil and groundwater.

Previous public comments on the project had civic and business leaders urging Ecology to move as quickly as possible on the cleanup efforts, which Ecology assumed control of from the port in February 2008.

"I hope and believe we can balance safe cleanup with speed," said Pat Rants, president of The Rants Group.

Meanwhile, environmentalists have urged Ecology to move through a cleanup process that identifies and corrects all lower Budd Inlet pollution sources before East Bay urban renewal begins.

"Dioxin has migrated the length and breadth of the peninsula, from Cascade Pole to the north to the shipping berths to the west and mouth of Moxlie Creek to the south," Olympia resident Harry Branch said. "In a patchwork layout like this, clean soil that's brought in will surely become recontaminated and we'll simply end up with a larger volume of contaminated soil."

Ecology officials said they are approaching the East Bay redevelopment site like any other toxic cleanup project, not cutting corners and not spreading pollution around.

"We are designing a plan so contamination isn't moving around," Ecology project manager Steve Teel said. "It's nice to work with someone (the port) that's motivated, rather than someone that's dragging their feet."