Toxic sites in Washington growing, cleanup report says

OLYMPIA—Despite cleaning up 5,017 toxic sites in Washington over the past 14 years, the number of contaminated sites being reported to the Department of Ecology is growing each year.

This is according to the new “State of Cleanup” report which reviews Washington’s toxic cleanup efforts since voters adopted the innovative Model Toxics Control Act (MTCA) in a 1988 initiative. The act established a formal process for cleaning up contaminated sites in Washington.

The cleanup report found that 55 percent of known contaminated sites require no further cleanup. However, the number of sites needing to be cleaned up continues to grow, with many of them involving prime real estate that property owners want to redevelop for new economic purposes.

More than 500 new sites were identified in 2001 compared to 479 the year before, according to the report.

Jim Pendowski, toxic cleanup manager for the ecology department, said the cleanup program has always been geared toward cleaning the most highly contamination spots first. However, real estate redevelopment sites are competing for ecology oversight, even though they may have less amounts of contamination.

“At redevelopment sites, cleanup is not viewed as an obstacle to economic development, but as the first step toward economic development,” Pendowski said. “Usually, there just isn’t a stigma attached to contamination there. It’s just another site characteristic to manage.”

Pendowski said the report’s findings are prompting the department to re-evaluate where employees should prioritize their time and where money should be concentrated.

“When the cleanup program began, an assumption was made that, with time and steady cleanup, it would become obsolete and put itself out of business,” Pendowski said. “But Washington’s past industrial legacy is broader than we imagined, and it looks like we’ll be busy for many years to come.”

The State of Cleanup Report is available online.

From the Department of Ecology, December 30

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