Your walk along the Port Angeles waterfront includes a 1.1 mile section of Olympic Discovery Trail that cuts through the fenced-off, decommissioned Rayonier pulp mill, a hazardous waste site.
One day, the trail will stretch 129 miles from Port Townsend to the ocean.
But by walking this tiny portion, do you risk disease or infection from dioxins, PCBs or other pollutants on your scenic stroll?
A look at the history of the trail over the last four years shows the answer may depend on who’s in charge.
What’s clear this particular week is that if new state Department of Ecology-mandated signs are posted that say there is a risk — it’s being urged by an environmental group — Rayonier would ask the city to shut down that section of the trail.
No entrance.
No trespassing.
It would mean closing existing gates at the east and west ends to foot and bicycle traffic, forcing users to walk up to Front Street and back to the trail to continue their strolls.
Rayonier Environmental Affairs Manager Dana Dolloff said the company would take such forceful action because while the city is liable for injuries along the trail, someone could still sue Rayonier if they claim they’ve been infected or otherwise harmed, he said.
“If signs go up there that say there’s a risk to going on that trail, I don’t see any alternative but to ask the city to close the trail,” Dolloff said.
“Having said that, this thing has gotten blown way out of rational proportion.
“It shouldn’t ever et to that kind of scenario. I can’t imagine that some compromise between the city and Ecology won’t be worked out.
“The chance of anyone getting infected is so minuscule.”
City officials and Dolloff have met, and state and city officials are now talking about the sign’s wording.
Dolloff is very optimistic everything will work out — and that the gates won’t close.
Worried by the potential
What you don’t know could hurt you, says Darlene Schanfald, an environmental activist with the private Olympic Environmental Council.
In 2002, she tried convincing the state Department of Health to install strongly worded signs and failed.
Back then, in a Sept. 27 letter to Schanfald, state health assessor Barbara Trejo, who is no longer in that position, said existing “no trespassing signs” and fencing still there now “are considered an adequate deterrent for preventing access at this site.”
She also said ” . . . direct contact with potential mill related contaminants on the trail is not possible.”
Four years later, Schanfald finally convinced state officials to reverse themselves and post warning signs along the perimeter of the mill site.
But Schanfald also wants the warning signs to include information about pollutants that might exist on the actual trail.
The new signs should state what a person should do if they fall down “and ways not to track contamination into their homes,” Schanfald said this week.
If someone fell down on the trail, they would not know if they had been infected, she said.
What changed over the last four years?
New personnel and different perspectives, state health department officials said, with one admitting the decision to upgrade signage was in large part subjective.
In addition, “We thought the cleanup would occur much faster,” said new site assessment section manager Wayne Clifford.
“That changed our opinion about having a sign there, and we felt pretty strongly that citizens have the right to know there is contamination on the other side of the fence.”
But does the agency agree with Schanfald that the trail could be contaminated?
“We have never said to her that we think the trail is a hazard, and we don’t agree with that interpretation,” site health assessor Gary Palcisko of the state Department of Health said Thursday.
Here’s state Ecology Director Jay Manning’s take:
“This is not about the safety of walking along the trail. The purpose of the sign is to warn people not to wander onto the mill site.”
A single interpretive sign on the trail now describes the history of the mill and includes a sentence about it being a hazardous waste cleanup site.
If there was any contaminated material in the area of the trail, it was covered by plastic and paved over when the trail was installed, Palcisko said.
Clifford added, “The science tells us the actual risk is probably lower than that perceived by the community.”
Got state’s attention
The Olympic Environmental Council has tried for several years to install more signs, but it’s an issue now also because it grabbed the attention of Manning, the new Ecology director, said Manning and Ecology solid waste program manager Laurie Davies.
Manning agreed with that assessment.
The proposed new signs are common at hazardous waste sites, Manning said.
Dolloff stands by the assertion that years ago, all parties to the cleanup agreed on the sign that’s out there now years ago.
The existing sign “could be updated,” Dolloff added.
Dolloff said signage wasn’t an issue until Clifford’s July 22, 2005, letter asserted that “it should be made clear that hazardous waste cleanup at the site is being conducted.”
Paul Gottlieb is editor of the Commentary Page of the Peninsula Daily News; 360-417-3536, e-mail paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
