PORT ANGELES — Rayonier and the state Department of Ecology have agreed on final cleanup-area boundaries at the company’s retired pulp mill site.
The company is reviewing a preliminary draft agreement that will allow Rayonier to complete cleanup of the 75-acre site and adjacent areas of Port Angeles Harbor while the company and state Department of Ecology decide the extent of cleanup that will be required off the site, Ecology spokeswoman Kim Schmanke said late Monday afternoon.
Ecology calls the pulp mill site “the study area.”
“We do agree on the area of the study area,” Schmanke said.
“This agreed order helps further the actual cleanup involved inside the boundaries of the property and part of the marine environment.
“I’m not sure how quickly we’ll have an agreed order out the door.”
Formal negotiations “will begin soon and will have a strict time limit,” after which the order will go out for public comment, Hannah Aoyagi, Ecology’s community outreach and environmental education specialist, said in an e-mail to Jeff Lincoln, the new executive director of the Harbor-Works Development Authority.
Harbor-Works is funded by the city of Port Angeles and Port of Port Angeles, which created the authority in May 2008 to direct the environmental cleanup and redevelopment of the Rayonier mill site.
The site has been a state Department of Ecology cleanup project since 2000.
The agreement between Rayonier and Ecology was announced shortly after Lincolngave a review of Harbor-Works’ goals to the Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce weekly luncheon Monday.
Lincoln, who became the public development authority’s first full-time director in June, told the group that he anticipated an announcement in a couple of weeks about an agreement between Ecology and Rayonier.
In a later interview, he identified Rayonier’s acceptance of the draft cleanup agreement as the topic of that expected announcement.
If the agreement holds, it would be “a huge step” in moving along a process that has been stalled while Ecology and Rayonier determine which areas need to be decontaminated and which areas don’t, Lincoln said in the interview.
“Basically, it’s like releasing pent-up energy,” he said. “This means the process is accelerating.”
Schmanke said Rayonier has had the draft agreement for two or three weeks.
Delays
But Ecology announced further delays in other facets of the cleanup project.
Harbor sediment sampling was completed in 2008, but a review of those results won’t be completed until some time in 2010, Aoyagi said.
Results had been expected this year.
In addition, off-site soil sampling for dioxin was finished in fall 2008 and preliminary results were released in February, but “analysis of dioxin patterns is taking longer than expected,” Aoyagi said.
“Ecology will either release the report or send another update on this study in 2010.”
Areas of the mill are contaminated with PCBs, dioxin, arsenic and other toxins from 68 years of manufacturing pulp before the plant closed in 1997.
In 2000, the federal Environmental Protection Agency ranked the site 2 or 3 on a scale of 1 to 10, calling it “moderately contaminated.”
Company site manger Warren Snyder estimated in February that Rayonier has already trucked away “probably 90 percent or more” of all the contaminated soil at the site, or about 20,000 tons.
“It contains most of the contamination,” he said then.
“There might be a large volume of very low-level contamination left.”
Rayonier has spent about $25 million on the cleanup.
Lincoln noted in his talk to the chamber luncheon that Harbor-Works was formed to possibly buy the site and direct its development.
He said that within two weeks, Harbor-Works will award a contract to analyze how best to market the site.
Due diligence
That contract is central to the process of Harbor-Works conducting due diligence, or investigating all that’s known about the property to make it ready for development.
Harbor-Works is negotiating with Rayonier to allow Harbor-Works to do the due diligence, Lincoln said.
The Port of Port Angeles agreed Aug. 10 to loan Harbor-Works $500,000 to conduct the due diligence process.
Harbor-Works also has asked the city of Port Angeles for a $500,000 loan.
The port and the city already have each loaned Harbor-Works $150,000.
Cleanup “is not a mystical problem,” Lincoln said.
“This site can be restored and put back into productive use. The first goal is jobs.”
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Staff writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
