PORT ANGELES – Events such as Thursday’s “community vision” meeting on the former Rayonier mill property exemplify the state wanting to clean up the site and surrounding Port Angeles Harbor waterfront.

That the message Jim Pendowski, toxic cleanup manager for the state Department of Ecology, gave to about 50 participants at an open house meeting at the Vern Burton Community Center.

Pendowski said the state wants to focus cleanup efforts in Port Angeles and at five other locations so they don’t become as environmentally degraded as Tacoma’s Commencement Bay or Seattle’s Elliott Bay.

It is possible to reclaim the environment at toxic cleanup sites, he said.

There’s a strong likelihood Ecology will be able to bring money to the Rayonier cleanup effort, Pendowski said.

The 75-acre Rayonier property at 700 S. Ennis St., on which a pulp mill closed March 1, 1997, still has low levels of carcinogenic dioxins and other toxins generated over 68 years.

The property jutting into the harbor is in the seventh year of a toxic-waste cleanup project supervised by Ecology, Rayonier and the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe.