Plans to dump PCB-tainted soil in Elliott Bay raise concerns
Environmentalists fear effect of toxic mud on animals and people
But some environmentalists are calling the meaning of his words into question because of a port project that has received permission to dump PCBs in Elliott Bay.
PCBs are polychlorinated biphenyls, toxic chemicals used as fire retardants that were banned in the 1970s. They are so toxic and so long-lived that they are usually measured in parts per billion -- yet the port proposes to dump 9 pounds of them into the bay for an upcoming dredging project. The mud to be dumped would come from an area being studied for cleanup as part of the Harbor Island Superfund site.
The dredging project -- which would dispose of 66,000 cubic yards of PCB-contaminated mud in the winter of 2008-09 -- has passed muster with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the state Ecology Department, the state Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
But a coalition of environmentalists says the tests used by those agencies are inadequate and do not protect the health of humans and orcas, which eat salmon that over time have been exposed to Puget Sound's polluted waters. Scientists say PCBs likely are making it tough for orcas to reproduce and possibly to find food.
Environmentalists would like the port to send the most contaminated part of the dredged materials -- roughly one-third of it, containing about 7 pounds of PCBs -- to a landfill rather than to the waters of Elliott Bay as planned.
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PCBs have been shown to cause behavioral and learning deficits in children exposed in the womb, according to the state Health Department, which recommends that people -- and especially women of childbearing age and young children -- limit meals of Puget Sound chinook salmon to one a week.
Scientists who study Puget Sound's 86 resident orcas, which are protected under the Endangered Species Act, fear that the high levels of PCBs in their offspring are killing them or, if they survive, making it difficult for them to reproduce.
Stephanie Jones, the port's senior manager of seaport environmental programs, said it would cost $1.8 million to dispose of the most contaminated part of the dredged materials in a landfill, rather than in the open water as planned.
The materials are being dredged to make way for deeper-draft ships at Terminal 30 as part of a $118 million port project to reconvert the terminal into a cargo terminal instead of using it for cruise ships, which would dock at Terminal 91 in Interbay.
The $1.8 million price tag for landfill disposal -- less than 1 percent of the project's total cost -- raises the questions: What does it mean to go above and beyond environmental requirements, and in which projects should the port pony up to earn the title of cleanest and greenest that its chief has set forth for it?
While nearly 2.5 million cubic yards of similarly tainted material dredged for construction projects has been dumped in Elliott Bay since the disposal site there opened in 1989, environmentalists are saying newly understood threats to the health of humans and wildlife require stricter rules for what can be dumped in the Sound in the future.
The Corps of Engineers, for its part, says it always requires that the highly contaminated parts of the mud dumped in the bay be covered with cleaner mud on top -- and that what's on the bay floor at the underwater dump site is actually cleaner than surrounding areas.
The EPA Superfund program's remedial project manager, Ravi Sanga, said that because the work is being done to keep the shipping lane open rather than as an environmental cleanup, different standards apply.
The EPA is investigating to what extent the mud at the bottom of the waterway should be cleaned up and is expected to make a decision by 2010. In the meantime, the EPA "doesn't want to slow down other projects, such as (ship channel) dredging," Sanga said.
After reviewing the Corps of Engineer's sampling, the EPA "felt very comfortable" with that agency's decision, Sanga said.
Would the EPA make the same decision if the environmental cleanup were already under way?
"It is too soon to tell," he said.
That is because the EPA does not have the test results it needs nor has it fully investigated the risks to human health and the ecosystem posed by the pollution in the shipping channel.
In a process crafted during the late 1980s, the Corps of Engineers gets representative samples from various locations in the top 4 feet of the mud at the bottom of the shipping channel, then looks at the average concentration of PCBs there. But buried within, environmentalists say, are pockets of extra-strong pollution that could be taken out of the water and sequestered in a landfill.
Under the port's plan, "the solution to pollution is dilution," said Fred Felleman, the Northwest representative of Friends of the Earth, which is leading the push for taking the toxic mud to a landfill. While the EPA and the Corps of Engineers use some of the same state standards for contamination, the EPA does more-specific testing and can sample 15 feet deep into the mud, if necessary. In this case, the area to be dredged is 44 feet deep,
Were the EPA to be overseeing this dredging, it would conduct more tests -- assessing the risk to human health and the ecosystem -- once it had more information.
King County Councilman Larry Phillips, chairman of the council's Regional Water Quality Committee, called the different standards for maintenance dredging versus Superfund cleanup "troubling."
"Standards here for water quality are higher and certainly in the context of the Puget Sound initiative," Phillips said, referring to a newly launched and ambitious project to revitalize the Sound's environmental health.
Phillips said he would support contributing county money to the increased costs of disposing of the material on land.
David Kendall, the chief of The Dredged Material Management Office for the Corps of Engineers, said his program is "a living program, and we change our guidance as needed, so we are definitely receptive" to advances in thought as local agencies duke it out.
Puget Sound is the subject of intense focus right now from a consortium of state and local agencies, tribes, scientists and businesses that is crafting a road map to ensure the health of its wildlife and the people who depend on it.
That effort is being guided by the Puget Sound Partnership, a state agency created by Gov. Chris Gregoire.
That means keeping PCBs out of the system, said scientists from the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
James West, a scientist with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, which has been monitoring toxic materials and fish in Puget Sound since 1990, said the real question is whether "relocating PCBs from one part of Puget Sound to another makes sense."
If this dredging were governed under Superfund cleanup standards -- which will be applied there in coming years -- the most toxic mud would not be dumped into the bay, Felleman said.
Port staff members fear that getting permission to move the contaminated mud out of the water and into a landfill could delay the dredging project -- which would be a problem because the port hopes to open Terminal 30 to trade by summer 2009.
Some port commissioners think the material could be sent to a landfill while keeping within the schedule to begin dredging by the end of next year, but whether a majority of them would support the move is still unknown.
"I think we can do this without risk of delay," said Port Commission President John Creighton, who with Commissioner Alec Fisken supports making efforts to send the material to a landfill.