PORT ANGELES — The City Council on Tuesday agreed to send the state a message: get on with it.
That message is contained in a resolution protesting the new timeline for cleanup of Rayonier’s former pulp mill site on the Port Angeles Harbor.
The resolution passed unanimously.
It requests that the state Department of Ecology condense the timeline, which gives the company three years to create further cleanup plans for its property and about 1,300 acres of Port Angeles Harbor, contained in a new agreement signed by Rayonier on Jan. 22.
Comment till March 5
Ecology won’t sign it until after the public comment period that ends March 5.
Pockets of PCBs, dioxin, arsenic and other toxins were found on the site, which is at the end of Ennis Street, after it closed in 1997 after 68 years of pulp mill operation. It has been an Ecology cleanup project since 2000.
City staff said the timeline, a year longer than what Ecology had proposed before, would hinder the ability of the Port Angeles Harbor-Works Development Authority to acquire the 75-acre property, and most importantly, a large tank that sits on it.
The city wants to use the tank to handle its sewage overflows.
City staff said the city wants the timeline to be condensed to help Harbor-Works to meet its August deadline of deciding whether to acquire the property.
Any later, and the city won’t have the tank early enough to meet its Ecology-mandated deadline of Dec. 31, 2015 to resolve the overflows.
“The city needs to have that property secured by late summer,” said City Attorney Bill Bloor.
If that doesn’t happen, the City Council will need to decide if it will acquire it through eminent domain, City Manager Kent Myers said.
Harbor-Works Executive Director Jeff Lincoln has said that, for the public development authority, the three-year timeline means it will not have as much information when negotiating with Rayonier than previously thought.
He has also said that the timeline does not make property acquisition impossible in August.
Overflows into Port Angeles Harbor, caused by storm water flowing into the sewer system, is a big issue for the city, which is facing stiff fines of $10,000 per day if it misses the deadline.
City Council member Max Mania, while not opposed to the resolution, expressed concern that the city was “putting all of its eggs in one tank” by relying on the 5-million-gallon structure.
Rayonier has said it has removed 20,000 tons of contaminated soil from the property and spent about $25 million on cleanup to date.
The new agreement is intended to finish the cleanup on the property and a portion of the harbor that both parties have agreed that Rayonier is responsible for contaminating.
But Ecology continues to say that the entire extent of the cleanup site has not been determined.
Storm water system
At the meeting, city staff told the council that the storm water collection system downtown may be disconnected from the sewer system.
Such a move would be intended to offset the sewage that would be added to the city’s system by the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe.
The tribe, which uses septic tanks, will be connected to the city’s sewer system by May 2011 as part of the National Park Service’s project to remove the two Elwha River dams.
The Elwha and Glines Canyon dams are slated for removal beginning in 2011 as part of a $308 million project to restore the Elwha River, once known for its salmon, to its natural state.
The park service has said that removing the dams will cause the groundwater level to rise, therefore, make the septic tanks unusable.
Disconnecting the storm water system would require a contractor, paid by the park service, tearing up about one lane of First Street between Lincoln Street and Marine Drive. Construction would take between 90 and 120 days.
The intent is to ensure that the additional waste does not contribute to sewage overflows.
Eliminating the connections downtown is believed to be enough to ensure that the waste that comes from the tribe doesn’t affect the system’s capacity.
In order to offset the tribe’s sewer contribution, the park service has wanted to mimic the city’s solution by building its own 430,000-gallon tank at 18th Street and Milwaukee Drive.
At $5.4 million, the cost estimate has come in a bit high and the federal agency is considering instead paying for a new storm water system for the city downtown as its solution. The cost estimate for that option is between $1.5 million and $2 million.
The city also considered disconnecting the sewer and storm water systems.
It funded a study in 2003, where 15 homes had their downspouts disconnected from the sewer system. The city concluded that doing that citywide would be too costly.
At the meeting, the council also passed a resolution that allows the city to charge developers $250 for each lot if a project is canceled. The charge is intended to recover some of the city’s costs of connecting utilities to the development.
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
