PORT ANGELES — On a bluff overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca sits the city’s closed landfill, 44 acres of dump brimming with 2 million tons of rotting garbage, engine parts — you name it.
Is that mass of detritus two miles west of downtown Port Angeles bleeding leachates — deadly, water-borne pollutants — that are creating a lifeless “dead zone” a half-mile into the Strait?
An initial look by the state Department of Ecology says no, but the Dry Creek Coalition begs to differ.
The landfill at the west end of 18th Street in Port Angeles and the leachates it produces will be a “major” topic of discussion at the coalition’s next meeting, which is open to the public, at 7 p.m. April 14, at the Dry Creek Grange, 3150 Edgewood Drive, board member Gerri Ferguson said.
Responding to a complaint from the homeowners group, Ecology determined in a report released last week that ocean waters have not been harmed by water seeping from two points near the landfill, Ecology’s regional manager Bill Harris said.
“The seeps, with their small flow rate of eight gallons per minute or less, have a negligible impact on water quality in the Strait of Juan de Fuca,” the report said.
“I won’t say we’re not concerned about it, but it’s not an imminent threat,” Harris said in an interview.
“It’s not a human health hazard.”
The report, Monitoring Intertidal Seepage from the Port Angeles Landfill, offers only a qualified assessment, Harris said.
State agencies, including the Department of Natural Resources, may still examine sediment for leachates, an effort urged by the Dry Creek Coalition and missing from the report, Harris said.
Coalition urges action
That may not happen soon enough for the coalition members, who have urged action on landfill pollution since at least 2005, when they pushed for removal of 1 million cubic yards of garbage, or an amount equal to about 2 million tons, group member Harley Oien said.
Back then, before a sea wall was built in 2007 to stabilize the bluff slope, engine and machine parts were plummeting from the landfill to the beach below, he said.
“We’ve got pictures of that,” Oien said. They are at the Coalition’s Web site, www.drycreekcommunity.org.
Pieces of metal remain embedded in the beach.
But given this most recent report, the coalition may file a complaint under the federal Clean Water Act, he and Ferguson said Tuesday.
Oien said he’s “100 percent certain” the group will file a complaint if the state officials “don’t protect the environment, as they are paid to do.”
Oien and Ferguson insisted the group’s own test of water quality shows unsafe, high levels of heavy metals, including copper.
It’s a problem all North Olympic Peninsula residents should be worried about, Ferguson said.
The group is concerned that landfill-related pollution is creating a lifeless “dead zone” — absent even eel grass — that Oien said stretches out a half-mile into the Strait.
“When the [two Elwha River] dams come down and they are trying to do fish restoration, the salmon are going to die because there is a dead zone and all the leachates that are in that water,” Oien said.
Added Coalition member Jim Jewell: “We are leaving it for someone in a couple of decades to take care of. That’s what we disagree with.
“We think something should be done now.”
The landfill is operated by city public works. Public Works Director Glenn Cutler could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Copper level
Harris allowed that the water samples showed amounts of copper that were six times the state’s water quality criteria, or standards, but still were not dangerous to health.
The standards “are established to sustain public health and public enjoyment of the waters and the propagation and protection of fish, shellfish, and wildlife,” according to the agency’s Web site, www.ecy.wa.gov.
The landfill began as a gravel pit that became a dump in the early 1950s.
The city of Port Angeles took over ownership in 1979. The landfill accepted about 60,000 tons of garbage annually, including about 5,000 tons of recycling, which totaled 91 percent of Clallam County’s garbage.
It was closed in 2007 when the city transfer station was set up as a terminus for the city’s garbage, which is now shipped to a facility in eastern Oregon.
The closed landfill has been capped with a synthetic membrane, covered in dirt and seeded with grass.
The landfill is bordered on the south by William R. Fairchild International Airport, on the north by the Strait, on the east by a cemetery and on the west by Dry Creek, which is an intermittent stream.
Several unknowns
The report cited several continuing unknowns about the landfill’s impact.
For example, it did not examine avenues by which pollution could leach into the Strait other than from the two seepage points.
“The presence and extent of a more generalized impact through the groundwater/surface water interface cannot be ruled out,” the report said.
“The extent of any leachate seeping through the beach is also unknown.”
Harris said he’s talking to city of Port Angeles, Clallam County and the state Department of Natural Resources officials to determine the next step in addressing the coalition’s concerns.
It’s undeniable that the landfill generates leachates, exceeding 25,000 gallons per day, according to a 2006 Environmental Protection Agency fact sheet.
The leachate is collected in an on-site pump station and pumped to the city’s wastewater treatment plant, according to the fact sheet.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
