PORT ANGELES — Cleanup that began on the former Rayonier Inc. pulp mill site in 2000 should be completed by 2020, a top state Department of Ecology cleanup official said Tuesday.
Rebecca Lawson, southwest regional section manager for Ecology’s toxics cleanup program, updated the project to 30 participants at the Port Angeles Business Association’s weekly breakfast meeting.
She said the Jacksonville, Fla.-based company’s parcel 2 miles east of downtown is largely free of dioxin and other contaminants that were contained in 34,000 tons of dug-up soil.
“The worst contamination has been removed,” she said of the prime upland waterfront parcel.
Pressed by a member of the audience to give a cleanup timeline, Lawson quipped that she expected cleanup to be complete by the time she retires in 2022.
She later amended that to 2020.
Fifteen years after Ecology took control of cleanup — and avoided a 2000 federal Superfund cleanup listing — a review has just begun of options for addressing toxic-laden areas of sediment in the western, central and eastern portions of 2,000-acre Port Angeles Harbor that contain toxins including dioxins, mercury, arsenic and PCBs.
Ecology’s harbor sediment investigation report on the entire harbor that began in 2008 and was completed in 2012 set back the Rayonier cleanup, Lawson said.
“It made us aware of an additional source area,” she said in a later interview.
“Cleanup sounds like it should be quick and easy and straightforward, but really, it’s pretty complicated, especially when we look at contaminated sediment in the harbor,” she said at the meeting.
It’s made the actual boundaries of Rayonier’s eastern harbor cleanup difficult to determine, she said.
Lawson said a feasibility study on sediment cleanup — which Rayonier Inc. will be responsible for — should be completed in early 2016, followed by a public comment period.
That will be followed by a consent decree and interim cleanup plan for Rayonier’s eastern portion of the harbor and the company’s upland area.
Lawson said the mostly cleaned-up upland portion of Rayonier may be completed in conjunction with Rayonier’s sediment remediation.
Requests for comment from a Rayonier spokesman were not returned Tuesday.
Lawson said it will be about three years before “active” sediment cleanup begins in the eastern harbor where Rayonier was located.
The highest concentrations of contamination will be dredged or sand-capped, she said in a later interview.
In the western harbor area, contaminated sediment is subject to less water movement than the rest of the harbor.
The Port of Port Angeles, city of Port Angeles, Georgia-Pacific LLC, Nippon Paper Industries USA, forest services company Merrill & Ring, the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and, in the past year, Owens Corning, have been named as partially responsible parties for removing potentially harmful substances from the western harbor.
Owens Corning and DNR are not participating in the cleanup at this time, Lawson said.
“Western harbor sources are responsible for most of the inner harbor dioxin contamination,” Lawson said in her breakfast meeting presentation.
Cleanup also could occur in a central area where “comingled” pollution was generated for decades from various industrial sources, and the western portion, where pollution has been linked to city, port and historic timber industry activities.
The extent of the central harbor cleanup is unknown, as is who might be responsible for cleaning up those waters, contaminants of which include pesticide and dioxins.
“We don’t know whether the central harbor will require active remediation or long-term monitoring,” Lawson said.
The Rayonier mill’s dioxin “had the potential” to contribute to low-level dioxin in the central harbor area, she said.
She said the sediment study completed in 2012 also revealed levels of PCBs, metals and dioxins that are not necessarily harmful to touch but when consumed by marine life can “bio-accumulate,” or travel up the food chain, and contaminate fish and other sea creatures consumed by humans.
She said cleanup standards are based on the harm accrued by eating contaminated food every day for 70 years of a lifetime, she said.
“Over an area, we’ll end up with average concentrations that meet the cleanup level,” she said.
During Lawson’s presentation, she hailed the Port of Port Angeles’ recent efforts to redevelop the abandoned KPly mill site on Marine Drive just west of downtown.
Port commissioners awarded a $3.57 million contract July 13 to finish cleaning up the 19-acre parcel in hopes it will be ready for development by November.
Cleanup efforts at KPly began in 2012, months after the site shut down for good.
“This site is a real success story,” Lawson said.
But it lacks the complexity and breadth of a Rayonier site almost four times larger than the KPly parcel, Lawson said.
Any development of the Rayonier site, where an ancient Klallam village once stood, would occur in conjunction with cultural-resources monitoring by the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe.
A sawmill was established on the site in 1887. Rayonier operated a plant there from 1930-1997, when it closed and was dismantled.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
