PORT ANGELES — The Port Angeles City Council is in favor of a complete, timely cleanup of the Rayonier Mill site.
The council voted 5-0 to direct staff to write to the state Department of Ecology following a special meeting Tuesday night.
“What is happening is unconscionable,” Deputy Mayor Navarra Carr said. “It’s been my whole lifetime that this project has been going on, and it will be another lifetime.”
Carr said Ecology has failed and taken advantage of Port Angeles, adding that the city needs to hold its elected officials and department heads responsible and make sure Rayonier fulfills its obligations to the people of Port Angeles.
The meeting was an opportunity for the city council and the public to hear presentations on the site cleanup before the public comment period ends at 11:59 p.m. Aug. 12. Comments can be submitted online at go.ecology.wa.gov/comment2270. Comments also can be emailed to Marian.Abbett@ecy.wa.gov or mailed to Marian Abbett, state Department of Ecology, P.O. Box 47775, Olympia, WA 98504-7775.
During an open house July 8, Ecology proposed what it called SL-3, a cleanup which would take the contaminated soil and pile it up on 10 acres under a cap of clean gravel, geotextile fabric and then clean soil to support vegetation. A common refrain Tuesday night was that option wasn’t good enough.
SL-3 is not permanent, Council member LaTrisha Suggs said.
“It feels like, at this point, they are taking the easy way out,” Mayor Kate Dexter said. “I’m really hoping that they will get a lot of public comment and that they’ll listen to it.”
The city is supporting option SL-5, which would remove all of the contaminated soil from the site and truck it to a landfill designed to handle toxic soil.
Tuesday’s meeting included presentations from multiple people about the site cleanup from different perspectives.
Courtney Bornsworth, natural resources and grant administrator for the city, gave the first presentation, which was an update on the 2025 Comprehensive Plan, including the results of the community survey regarding the Rayonier Mill site. In that survey, community members were asked to state what sort of development they would like to see on the site. The majority said they wanted to see mixed use of open space with residential and commercial uses.
“The site is currently zoned as industrial use-heavy,” she said. “Pushing for a mixed-use site may result in a more complete cleanup.”
The 80-acre site at the bottom of Ennis Creek on the east side of Port Angeles Harbor has been used for industrial purposes since 1917. Rayonier ran a pulp mill there from 1930 until it closed in 1997.
The Western Port Angeles Harbor cleanup is separate from the Rayonier project.
During the almost 70 years it extracted cellulose from wood using an ammonia-based acid sulfite process, the mill released toxins into the harbor through wastewater created by the pulp-making process and from the thousands of creosote-treated pilings that supported docks and structures, into the air by burning seawater-soaked wood and into the ground from its operations.
Among the contaminants left behind were dioxins and furans; PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls); metals like arsenic and lead; ammonia and petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH).
Rayonier has completed some remediation, removing more than 30,000 tons of the most contaminated soil between 1993 and 2008, as well as 800 concrete deck panels.
Darlene Schanfald of the Olympic Environmental Council presented on the council’s involvement in the cleanup over the years.
“I believe Ecology is so happy to get Rayonier to agree to anything that they settled for less than the full cleanup,” she said.
Robbie Mantooth, co-founder of Friends of Ennis Creek, spoke about the importance of the creek and the salmonids.
“In recent years, we’ve seen no salmon or steelhead in the stream through our property,” Mantooth said. “We think it’s a wonder the fish have survived as long as they have.”
Mantooth agreed with previous speakers that option SL-3 is not good enough and that SL-5 should be used for the cleanup.
“We think Ecology’s team needs to prioritize what the fish need now: an estuary, space and the pollutants gone,” she said. “Rayonier needs to take responsibility and cover all costs.”
Finally, Integral Consulting Principal Scientist Nicole Ott presented to the council.
In 2019, Ecology released remediation of SL-2, which covered less than SL-3, but public comment led to more cleanup, she said.
“SL-5 has the greatest benefit score,” Ott said. “It’s about as high as you can get.”
The problem, however, is that SL-5 will cost about $27 million more than SL-3, which was scored as having very close benefits with SL-5.
“The decision uses the difference between the benefits and the cost,” Ott said.
She said SL-3 likely underestimates the cost due to permitting, design, modeling, maintenance, repairs, Mother Nature, restrictive covenants, coordination with sediment work and loss of taxes and economic benefit.
“SL-3 is more complicated and complex than SL-5,” Ott said.
She stated the cost estimates for SL-5 are higher than expected because the engineering is not as complex.
The bottom line from all presenters and the public was that SL-5 is the only permanent cleanup option for the site.
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Reporter Emily Hanson can be reached at emily.hanson@peninsuladailynews.com.
