Contaminated Sites

Department of Ecology News Release - March 12, 2001 01-038

Ecology Department updates cleanup list

OLYMPIA - Washington's Department of Ecology (Ecology) has added 32 properties to its list of contaminated sites and removed 13 that have been cleaned up and no longer pose a threat.

The changes bring the total number of sites targeted for cleanup to 875.

The 32 added sites are located in 11 counties: Benton, Grant, King, Kitsap, Lewis, Pierce, Skagit, Snohomish, Spokane, Whatcom and Yakima. They include waste-disposal facilities, bulk-fuel plants, auto-dismantling yards, and properties with leaking underground-storage tanks.

The 13 sites removed from the list are located in six counties: Clark, King, Pierce, Spokane, Thurston and Walla Walla.

"It is significant that more sites are moving into cleanup phase and being removed from the list than are being discovered," said Jim Pendowski, manager of Ecology's toxics-cleanup program. "We are concerned about all levels of hazardous sites and want to see them undergoing treatment, but it's a credit to updated regulations and industrial practices that we've seen fewer reports of newly contaminated properties."

It proves that historic problems are being contained and headway has been made, he said.

Only 10 years into implementing the state's Model Toxics Control Act (MTCA), a citizen initiative that established a broad-based program for cleaning up and preventing toxic contamination, 50 percent of the 8,800 known contaminated sites have been cleaned up or deemed to require no further action.

The properties on Ecology's hazardous-sites list are ranked on a scale of one to five, with a score of one representing the highest level of concern and five the lowest.

The scores are based on analyses of the potential paths through which humans and sensitive environments could be exposed to hazardous substances. Thus, a site with a number one ranking may have less contamination or less-hazardous contaminants than lower-ranked sites, but the risk of exposure is higher and cleanup needs to happen quicker.

MTCA specifies that those responsible for polluting a site must pay for its cleanup. The state pays for cleanup only when a liable person cannot be found or when identified liable parties lack the financial resources to pay for the work.

Nearly every county in Washington has one or more properties on the hazardous-sites list. Most are in Western Washington, where historically there have been more industrial and manufacturing practices.

The hazardous-sites list is updated twice a year, in February and August.

The sites added at the end of February 2001 include:

The sites taken off the list at the end of February 2001 are:

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