PORT ANGELES — Dorothy Skerbeck, once an avid gardener, said the discovery of dioxin on her property wouldn’t keep her from growing or eating vegetables.
Skerbeck, 85, has lived in her home on the bluffs east of Port Angeles for 50 years.
“We’re gardeners,” she said. “We’ve been in contact with the soil all this time.
“We’ll go on living like we always did.”
A sample of soil from her property last July found 34 parts of dioxin — among the most toxic chemicals in existence — per trillion parts of soil, the state Department of Ecology reported last week.
It was one of three samples taken throughout Port Angeles that contained 30 parts per trillion of dioxin or greater — including one that was 76 parts per trillion — and one of 45 samples that exceeded Ecology’s cleanup level for dioxin of 11 parts per trillion parts of soil in residential areas.
In all, 85 soil samples were taken by Ecology in Port Angeles last July in the vicinity of the former Rayonier Inc. pulp mill.
Homegrown veggies
Skerbeck and her late husband, Dr. Frank Skerbeck, grew and ate vegetables — feeding a family of 15 children — for decades until his death from brain cancer 13 years ago, she said.
She said she would continue to grow and eat her own vegetables, “if I could reach the ground.”
Skerbeck, a community activist who won a 1998 Community Service Award for work inspired by the needs of a son born with Down syndrome, was among the homeowners who volunteered to allow Ecology to take soil samples from their properties last fall to test for the presence of dioxin.
Ecology last Tuesday released preliminary results of the testing throughout Port Angeles.
Most samples were taken on private property; five were from city-owned property.
The sample was taken from a part of Skerbeck’s land that had not been used for gardening.
“I don’t know what to make of it,” Skerbeck said.
She hopes to learn more about the testing results from Ecology.
“I think it is significant,” she said.
“I don’t know what to think, what to do, if anything.”
Seeking a pattern
Testing results do not indicate a need for cleanup on a particular property, said Rebecca Lawson, regional manager of Ecology’s toxics cleanup program, adding that one sample isn’t enough to declare a property contaminated.
The point of testing, she said, was to look for a pattern that would show whether or not Rayonier is responsible for dioxin contamination on other areas than its own property, a 75-acre site at the end of Ennis Street where its pulp mill operated for 68 years before closing in 1997.
Ecology’s final report on dioxin finds in Port Angeles is due in the spring.
Preliminary results were released because property owners were promised they would get the results as soon as possible, Lawson said.
She said Ecology will analyze the chemistry of the dioxin to determine how it was made, such as if it came from the bleaching process conducted at pulp mills.
This, Ecology hopes, will lead it to a source.
If Rayonier is determined to be responsible for dioxin contamination off its property, Ecology will seek to extend the cleanup site to include the vicinity of the former mill site.
Lawson said that gardening or any human activity dilutes the levels of dioxin in soil.
Dioxin occurs naturally, but is also a byproduct of industrial processes.
It also is released from internal combustion engines and from burning wood — even forest fires.
Downwind from mill
Skerbeck said her property on Masters Road was downwind from the mill, which was on the waterfront to the west. She said she could always smell an odor when the mill was operating.
Cleanup has been under the supervision of state Ecology since 2000.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency said then that the property is moderately contaminated — perhaps a level of 2 or 3 on a scale of 10.
Skerbeck said she doesn’t know if dioxin will have to be removed from her land.
“If it needs to be cleaned up, than the whole bluff does,” she said. “Everything was downwind of the plant.
“Somehow, that doesn’t seem feasible.”
The city-owned sampling locations include three parcels that are part of Webster’s Woods outdoor sculpture park at the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center at 1203 E. Lauridsen Blvd. — which found 12 parts of dioxin per trillion parts of soil in the combined samples — one adjacent to Francis Street Park — which found fewer than 11 parts per trillion — and another along DelGuzzi Drive that also found fewer than 11 parts per trillion.
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
