PORT ANGELES — Cleanup of the former KPly mill site on the Port Angeles Harbor could be finished as soon as September 2016, although pollutants could linger there another three decades.
Those contaminants, however, will be capped, excavated and trucked off, consumed by bacteria or ventilated away by any future user of the 19 acres at 439 Marine Drive in Port Angeles, about two dozen people at a community meeting were told Wednesday.
They attended an open house and briefing on the KPly cleanup that was hosted by the state Department of Ecology at Olympic Medical Center.
Ecology will supervise the $5.2 million decontamination project that’s expected to start this spring
The state Senate’s capital budget, which now goes to the House of Representatives, calls for $1.5 million to aid the project.
The Port of Port Angeles, the site’s owner, will try to recover more of the cost from insurers and claims against former owners and operators, including Rayonier and Exxon Mobil.
The cleanup is expected to restore to usable industrial condition a site that was once a tidal flat.
Starting in the 1920s on filled earth, log yards, paper mills, bulk fuel plants and pipelines, and plywood mills — the most recent being the Peninsula Plywood mill that closed in 2011 — occupied the site.
Each added its own forms of pollution.
Meanwhile, the long-sought cleanup of the Rayonier mill site on the eastern edge of town is in the middle of a feasibility study that could be ready for public review this fall, Ecology toxic cleanup manager Rebecca Lawson said Wednesday.
An actual cleanup plan for the Rayonier site isn’t expected to be ready for scrutiny for a year after that.
As for the Marine Drive site, it is polluted by gasoline, diesel fuel, heavy oil, hydraulic fluid, benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes, pentachlorophenol, dioxins, and furans — all of which contaminate the soil, some of which affect the groundwater and harbor, and some of which would foul the indoor air of structures built there — according to Connie Groven, the KPly site manager.
Those last areas, Groven said, will carry restrictive covenants calling for vapor assessment and proper ventilation to make the air safe to breathe if they are built upon.
A temporary covenant also will ban excavation at the old log pond site until it is evaluated for pollutants.
The PenPly buildings were razed and its smokestack toppled in 2013, but two leaky pipelines still run beneath the site that also includes a huge concrete pad. It will be broken up and trucked away or used for fill.
Some of the contaminated earth simply will be dug up and trucked off to environmentally safe landfills.
Some of it will be injected with bacteria that will digest the petrochemicals and render them safe.
And some of it will be dried under high heat with the toxic vapors rendered harmless.
The Olympic Region Clean Air Agency will ensure that this last method is nonpolluting, Grover said.
Other onsite safeguards will include monitors that will sound alarms if toxic concentrations endanger workers, who then may don protective clothing or breathing gear.
An archeologist also will be present throughout the project in case excavators discover artifacts such as those found westward along the harbor at the ancient Native American village and burial site Tse-whit-zen.
More than 80,000 artifacts were unearthed there beginning in 2003.
That possibility is slim, Groven said, because the entire site to 15 feet below ground was filled almost 100 years ago.
The cleanup by bacteria, known as bioremediation, could take years to complete, she said, although “we expect to meet the groundwater point of compliance within a couple of years.”
Other soils could take up to 30 years to return to a safe state, but they will be removed from exposure to people or wildlife, Groven said, and prevented from being tracked or blown away from the KPly site.
The property is among the most valuable real estate on the North Olympic Peninsula, part of a waterfront the port values at $40 million.
It stretches from the KPly site to the crook of Ediz Hook.
“The port is interested in turning this site over [for development],” Grover said.
“These are aggressive dates. They are ahead of the agreed order” that all responsible parties to the cleanup have signed.
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com
