PORT ANGELES — The business community’s decade-long desire to develop the abandoned Rayonier Inc. pulp mill site is not shared by the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe, Port Angeles Business Association members heard Tuesday.
The tribe — one of the partners, along with the state Department of Ecology and Rayonier Inc., in the cleanup of the site — is against allowing commercial-industrial development of the prime waterfront parcel, tribal environmental coordinator Matt Beirne told the business group at its weekly breakfast meeting.
Instead, the tribe hopes to return the site to its natural state, with public access and interpretive trails in a plan initially proposed by Rayonier, Beirne said.
Beirne was introduced to the approximately 30 attendees by PABA Vice President Dick Pilling, who said there is “overwhelming” support for mixed use at the site.
“We need working-wage jobs and should therefore be allowed to exploit all our possibilities,” Pilling, who is also a real estate broker and the chairman of the Clallam County Republican Party, told the group.
Beirne outlined goals for the site that did not include development: reduction of human health risks, a cleanup enabling the tribe to fish and to harvest shellfish in Port Angeles Harbor, and protection of cultural resources, including a burial ground.
Restoration of salmon-bearing Ennis Creek is a goal, Beirne said, that is “first and foremost” for the tribe.
“We believe it’s been pretty clear that by and large, the greatest demand is for restoration of Ennis Creek,” Beirne said, adding that the creek’s renewal would help restore fisheries in the harbor and region.
He added that the now-defunct Harbor-Works Development Authority, a public development authority created to guide the future of the property, “recognized it’s not well-suited” for mixed uses and added that other property is available for development.
Restoration would occur concurrently with cleanup under the plan.
Rayonier concept
Beirne said here’s what the tribe and Rayonier envision happening to the site but said the concept belongs to Rayonier “as a means of resolving natural resource damages”:
■ Removal of infrastructure, including a four-acre pier, which is built upon close to 10,000 pilings, Beirne said.
It is “a derelict structure” never of much use to boats, he said.
■ Removal of a jetty, five bridges over Ennis Creek, rubble, concrete pads, a clarifier and the remaining, ubiquitous asphalt, including the parking area.
■ Physical restoration of the site that would include widening the mouth of Ennis Creek, re-establishing the estuary, restoring the stream’s meanders and sloping the beach, much of which is fill.
■ Low-impact public access elements would include interpretive trails, viewing platforms with interpretive signs, public parking and trail access.
Beirne said the Lower Elwha tribe is not interested in the type of development advocated by the Jamestown S’Klallam for the site.
Ron Allen, chairman of the Jamestown S’Klallam, envisions a “Salish Village” at the site, a modern Native American village that would be totally self-contained, including its own water, sewer and power consumption.
Beirne said, “What we are not looking at proposing is a park-like setting with manicured grass.
“We are looking at restoring the natural ecosystem.”
Part of the Rayonier site is on the ancient Klallam village of Y’innis.
The name, which means “good beach,” existed for thousands of years before the short-lived Puget Sound Colony was established in 1887, followed by a spruce mill for building World War I airplanes that never did build airplanes.
A pulp mill that would become a Rayonier property was built there in 1930 and closed in 1997, leaving a site that Beirne said qualified for Superfund cleanup but was turned over to state Department of Ecology coordination under the state Model Toxics Control Act.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency, Ecology and the tribe all must sign off on cleanup, he said.
“The cleanup has to be substantively similar to an EPA Superfund-caliber cleanup,” Beirne said.
Toxins at the site include dioxins, furans and PCBs, but Rayonier has cleaned up most of the “hot spots” at the site, Beirne said after the meeting.
As the cleanup has progressed — in 2000, Ecology predicted cleanup would be complete in 2004 — the cleanup boundaries have become less defined and are still unknown.
Ecology, in consultation with the tribe, will base those boundaries on “where contamination comes to rest” that was generated by Rayonier’s 67 years of operation, Beirne told the group.
A work plan for cleanup is due in 2013, Beirne said, adding he did not know when cleanup would be completed.
“The tribe is not looking for ways to slow this process down,” he said.
This summer, harbor sediment and soil dioxin studies will be released for public review, Beirne said.
Rayonier sold the city 12 acres on the east side of Ennis Creek, including a storage tank, to convey stormwater to the tank and an adjacent wastewater validly, he said.
Workers are currently trenching the area for the project in consultation with the tribe.
The sewage will be treated and released into the Strait of Juan de Fuca through an outfall acquired from Rayonier as part of the city’s combined sewer overflow project.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladaily
news.com.
