PORT ANGELES — Irked Port of Port Angeles commissioners Monday said they want the state Department of Ecology to speed up its announced three-year timeline for cleaning up the site of the former Rayonier pulp mill at the northeast corner of Port Angeles.
All three commissioners expressed frustration at the lengthened timeline announced by Ecology last month.
“I went through all of the [Revised Code of Washington], and I found nothing that mandated a three-year paperwork process,” said Commissioner Jim McEntire during a board meeting on Monday.
“I think it is well within the realm of possibilities that we can ask Gov. [Chris Gregoire] and her staff to do what we ask, which is to shorten the timeline and to begin to undertake some cleanup action.
“We have had 10 years of process, and it is my opinion personally that we don’t need another three years of process for us to know what is happening there.”
Commissioner John Calhoun echoed those thoughts.
“This community cannot continually be held hostage by an international corporation and a faceless state bureaucracy,” he said.
“We need to control our own destiny.”
George Schoenfeldt, commission president, said he agreed with his fellow commissioners.
The port resolution, like a similar one passed by the Port Angeles City Council on Feb. 2, requests the state Department of Ecology condense the timeline, which gives Rayonier three years to create further cleanup plans for its property and about 1,300 acres of Port Angeles Harbor bottom, contained in a new agreement signed by Rayonier on Jan. 22.
Ecology won’t sign it until after the public comment period 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.
Rayonier has said it has removed 20,000 tons of contaminated soil from the property and spent about $25 million on cleanup to date.
Finish the job
The new agreement is intended to finish the cleanup on the property and the portion of the harbor that both parties have agreed that Rayonier is responsible for contaminating.
But Ecology continues to say the entire extent of the cleanup site has not been determined.
The port commissioners also unanimously voted in favor of a plan for the site that they termed “Alternative D.”
Harbor-Works Development Authority Executive Director Jeff Lincoln has publicly suggested three alternatives that he termed as “mix-and-match.”
The alternatives as developed by Harbor-Works include:
• Alternative A, which describes a diverse development with marine, retail and industrial uses.
• Alternative B also includes retail and commercial development but adds a proposal for a cultural research facility and museum east of Ennis Creek, where the village of Y’innis is presumed to have been.
• Alternative C focuses on marine industries and includes a marina and an industrial area.
The alternative that the commissioners voted in favor of was essentially a combination of Alternative B’s cultural research facility and Alternative C’s marine industries area.
The marine industries area could eventually be run and owned by the port.
“One thing we want to be completely clear is that this does not bind us, but this is simply a way for us to say that this is the direction we think they should move forward in,” Schoenfeldt said.
The city and port have loaned Harbor-Works a total of $1.3 million.
Airport runway
In other business Monday, Airports and Marinas Manager Doug Sandau told the commissioners the runway lights at William R. Fairchild International Airport will after March 1 be pilot-activated after 10 p.m. on the main runway, which runs east and west.
The action is intended to save the port on overhead. The shorter runway will not be lighted at all at night.
“This is a very common action — in fact almost all of the smaller airports in Alaska are lit this way,” Sandau said.
“The 13-31 runway is never used after dark anyway, so it will be discontinued permanently and used for daylight-only hours.”
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladaily news.com.
