PORT ANGELES — Skepticism greeted Rayonier Inc. representatives at Tuesday morning’s Port Angeles Business Association breakfast meeting — even as they assured the packed audience that the company would continue to work with the community to determine a viable future for its former pulp mill site.
“One thing that is not coming from Rayonier is that they are not asking what do we want as a community,” said Jim Hallett, one of those in the audience.
Hallett scoffed at Rayonier project manager Carla Yetter’s deadline of next spring for a completed soil- and sediment-sample report and by the end of 2013 for a full cleanup plan.
The Rayonier property on the Port Angeles waterfront has been a state Department of Ecology-supervised cleanup site since 2000.
Pockets of contamination — PCBs, dioxins and other toxic chemicals — were left by the mill when it closed in 1997 after operating for 68 years.
Rayonier ran the pulp mill from the 1930s until its closure.
It had been the largest private employer on the North Olympic Peninsula.
Most of the buildings on the 75-acre site have been demolished.
The city bought a 5-million-gallon tank at the site from Rayonier and 11 acres around the structure that it plans to use for stormwater control.
Hallett owns Hallett & Associates, an investment advisory firm based in Port Angeles.
He is the president of the Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce, a former Port Angeles mayor and is running unopposed this fall for a seat on the Port of Port Angeles board of commissioners.
He was a board member on the Harbor-Works Development Authority, which was formed by the port and the Port Angeles City Council in May 2008 to acquire and redevelop Rayonier’s former mill site.
Harbor-Works dissolved in October 2010 after an end to negotiations with Rayonier.
“We have had deadlines in the past,” said Hallett.
“Artificial deadlines and legal deadlines get changed depending on who’s in Ecology.”
Yetter countered that violating the deadlines she had mapped out — in Rayonier’s legally binding, agreed-upon order with Ecology officials — could result in the company being fined.
About 90 percent of contaminated soil at the site east of downtown Port Angeles has been trucked away, though contaminated-soil extraction last occurred in 2006 in an overall cleanup effort that has cost Rayonier $26 million, Yetter said in an interview with the Peninsula Daily News after the PABA meeting.
Company public-affairs chief Charles Hood also said during the interview that the company did not “walk away from the table” in July 2010 by telling Harbor-Works officials that Rayonier was no longer interested in negotiating the sale of the site.
When Rayonier’s surprise rejection letter arrived, Harbor-Works was two weeks away from voting on trying to purchase the property.
It had received a combined $1.3 million in loans from the city and port that were never paid back after the public development authority closed.
“They did not meet our criteria,” Hood said, citing the financial commitment associated with the transfer of land and “other criteria.”
“It’s not that we walked away; we just couldn’t get there,” said Hood, adding that the company has never marketed the parcel because it is still an active cleanup site.
“It’s not our responsibility to basically determine the needs of the community,” Hood said.
“We don’t regret how the negotiations ended up, but they were negotiations.
“If, at the end of the day, if there is no commercially viable use that meets our criteria for transferring ownership, then the property will be cleaned up and restoration will occur, and that will be the final use.”
Still undetermined is the actual cleanup area, which could include property outside the Rayonier site that was contaminated, such as Port Angeles Harbor and city residential land, said Nathan West, the city’s director of community and economic development.
Determining the cleanup area is “one of the basic principles of moving forward,” West said.
The portion of the property that had been used by the pulp mill is valued at $5 million, according to the Clallam County Assessor’s Office.
Rayonier “will continue to be sensitive to what community opinions are,” Hood said during the interview.
“The future use of the property is dependent on what we end up having to do in remediation and what restoration looks like.”
“We are trying to stay close and keep the lines of communication open.
“Beyond that, I’m not sure what else we can do.
“We want to see whatever makes the most sense for our shareholders, with community input.”
Yetter told the group that Rayonier is “not deaf” to community concerns.
“The cleanup process is a public process,” she said.
“We want this finished. We want to push [Ecology].”
Hallett wasn’t encouraged by Hood telling the group that shareholders must be taken into account.
“If I’m a shareholder, I want you to do the least amount necessary,” he said, suggesting Rayonier remove the dilapidated four-acre pier at the site and a jetty.
Hallet said the pier and jetty were on a part of the site owned by the state Department of Natural Resources — and must be removed if they weren’t being used by the company.
But Yetter said only part of the jetty and dock are on DNR land and that their fate depends on the scope of cleanup and restoration.
Hood said that during their visit Tuesday to Port Angeles, he and Yetter were not meeting with city officials or the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe, which is a partner in the cleanup and has focused much of its attention on restoring Ennis Creek, once a productive salmon stream.
Part of the Rayonier site includes the buried remains of Y’Innis, a large settlement that was one of the homes to the Klallam tribe for thousands of years.
There are competing visions for the site:
■ The Lower Elwha Klallam tribe wants it returned to its natural state, with no commercial development, according to tribal environmental coordinator Matt Beirne.
■ In two “visioning processes” in 2007 and 2010 that included community meetings, residents said they wanted “a mixture of uses, a balance of approaches,” on the property.
■ Ron Allen, chairman of another Klallam tribe, the Jamestown S’Klallam, has proposed a “living” Salish Village with a restored pier, a mixed-use commercial and residential center, and a hotel with conference space.
Hood said there have been no discussions with the Jamestown tribe about Allen’s proposal.
The property is zoned for industrial uses.
But Ecology “wants that property to be cleaned up beyond an industrial standard,” Yetter told the PABA breakfast group.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladaily
news.com.
