PORT ANGELES — Three of the state Department of Ecology staff members overseeing environmental cleanup of Rayonier’s former mill site will be in Port Angeles on Wednesday for an informal open house on the project.
The meeting will be conducted from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. in Room 160 of the Clallam County Courthouse, 223 E. Fourth St., Port Angeles.
The staff members who will be present are Rebecca Lawson, Ecology’s toxics cleanup manager for its southwest region, which includes the Olympic Peninsula; Marian Abbett, site manager; and Connie Groven, project manager.
No formal presentation will be made, and the staff members will be available to speak with the public.
Ecology has supervised the cleanup of the former mill site since 2000.
The property is contaminated with heavy metals, polychlorinated biphenyls (or PCBs) and dioxin left over from 68 years of pulp mill operations. The mill closed in 1997.
This year, Rayonier began taking additional soil samples on its property, located on Port Angeles Harbor at the foot of Ennis Street, as required by a new agreement it signed with Ecology in March.
The agreement calls for a cleanup plan of the 75-acre property and 1,325 acres of harbor sediment to be drafted in 2013.
The boundaries of the cleanup project have yet to be defined.
Lawson said in August that two studies that are intended to determine whether Rayonier will have to clean up land away from its property, and any additional harbor sediment, will both be completed early next year, if not sooner.
They were initially slated to be complete in the summer or fall of 2009.
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
