PORT ANGELES — The City Council and Port of Port Angeles commissioners unanimously agreed Tuesday night to cooperate in cleaning up Port Angeles Harbor and redeveloping the former Rayonier mill site.
The new Port Angeles Harbor Works Public Development Authority approved by the two boards will combine political efforts and legal powers on a project that has haunted the city since the mill shut down more than a decade ago.
“People have said cleaning up a contaminated former industrial site isn’t rocket science — it’s more complicated than that,” City Manager Mark Madsen said.
The objective of the cleanup and redevelopment of the 75-acre site at the end of Ennis Street is to make it “a part of the fabric of the community again, but in a different way,” he said.
The Rayonier property is in the eighth year of a toxic-waste cleanup project supervised by Rayonier, the state Department of Ecology and the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe.
In January, in order to speedup the cleanup, the project was transferred from Ecology’s solid waste section to its toxics cleanup section and given additional funding and personnel as part of Gov. Chris Gregoire’s directive to clean up Puget Sound by 2020.
The Port Angeles Harbor-Works Development Authority’s tasks will include:
