PORT ANGELES — A cleanup plan for the former Rayonier mill site will take slightly longer to create than the state Department of Ecology had last projected.
Rather than getting it done around summer 2013, the plan is now expected to be ready toward the end of that year, Rebecca Lawson, Ecology’s southwest regional toxics cleanup program manager, said Friday.
The reason for the change is that additional soil and groundwater sampling on the Rayonier property is taking a few months longer than when Ecology made that estimate, she said.
That’s taking longer because the state agency and Rayonier agreed to have the testing done in phases rather than all at once, which Lawson said will provide better results.
Ecology had estimated it would take six months in its “agreed order” with Rayonier, signed about a year ago.
More like nine months
It’s looking more like nine months, Lawson said.
“In reality, we weren’t sure how long it was going to take,” she said.
“The phased approach does take a little longer,” Lawson added, “and it also helps ensure that we’re going to get all the data we need to move forward with making a cleanup plan.”
The Rayonier property is contaminated with pockets of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxin, arsenic and other toxins left by the pulp mill that operated at the base of Ennis Creek there for 68 years before closing in 1997.
The site became an Ecology cleanup project in 2000.
City leaders, already wary of a cleanup project that started 11 years ago and has yet to produce a plan for removing contaminates, didn’t welcome the news.
‘Very frustrating’
“It is very frustrating,” said City Manager Kent Myers last month.
“We have been hoping they would stay on task, stay on schedule, that they had the right commitment to the project and that this is a high priority, and this is very disappointing.”
Lawson said she recognizes the frustration.
“We are really trying to find that balance between doing a comprehensive study and a timely study,” she said.
“This has been going on for a decade, and we all want to see it get completed, and we need to do a complete cleanup.”
The sampling, intended to fill in “data gaps” with past work, began last fall.
Lawson said the last phase of the sampling will start this week.
Ecology expects it will take another three months for sampling and lab work to be finished.
While the agreed order binds Rayonier to meet certain deadlines, not every work item has a definitive time line, Lawson acknowledged.
How long work related to Ecology’s off-site soil and marine sediment studies — which are part of the Rayonier cleanup effort — and Ecology’s review of documents will take is merely estimated.
Time line could slip
Lawson acknowledged that, since how long those efforts to take hasn’t been fully fleshed out, they present potential opportunities for the time line to slip further.
She said she is “pretty confident” that won’t happen.
“We’re almost finished with implementing the fieldwork, so we feel pretty confident we will finish on time,” Lawson said.
Lawson said she and her staff will look at ways to condense the time line in other areas to make up for time lost.
The marine and off-site soil studies, started in 2008, remain incomplete.
Those studies are intended to determine the extent of contamination from the mill.
The final results of the soil study should be released for public comment this spring, Lawson said.
The third, and possibly final, draft of the marine sediment study should be done this week, she said.
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
