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Concerned Citizens React to NorthPoint Development Plans

By Monica Hoover

The Port of Olympia manages, on our behalf, over 2.5 miles of downtown Olympia shoreline. One part of this area, at the northern end of the Port Peninsula just south of the KGY Radio station, is the NorthPoint redevelopment site. It is the 2.4 acres between the containment cap (a recently paved elevated parking lot) and the Hearthfire Grill restaurant parking lot.

Last September, the Port of Olympia invited developers to respond to a Request for Proposal (RFP) to redevelop NorthPoint. They received a complete response from only one developer, MJR Development from Kirkland. The Port and the developer held a series of three public meetings in late October 2009 to review MJR's proposals. The Port gave the public comments to MJR who used them to create Alternative 3 – a luxury hotel adjacent to the shoreline, almost the length of a football field and 40 feet tall. After reading all the public comments from the October meetings, it is difficult to see the link between the comments and the current proposal.

This area, part of the Cascade Pole toxic contamination site, required a large public investment in the cleanup to make it available for any use. When a group of citizens asked the Port Commission about additional public use of this area, they were directed to meet with the local representative of MJR Development. At this meeting, it was clear that almost the entire site would function as the private property of the hotel with no regard to the $29 million investment in the cleanup. There are abundant opportunities for the Port of Olympia to shape an area that is an asset to the whole community with opportunity for development balanced with areas for public use. However, the Port's current plan of turning the process over to the developer will squander the true potential of this site. The Port of Olympia needs a new model for development where the people who live here drive the vision for development of Port owned land.

Site History – Cascade Pole

The most obvious part of the Cascade Pole site is the containment cap, a recent (2002) addition to the landscape. It is made up of contaminated soil and marine sediment dug out of the adjacent beach. It is part of the legacy of previous Port tenants who used the site to treat wood from the 1930's to the 1980's. The last tenant was the Cascade Pole Company, which operated a wood treatment facility from 1957 to 1986. From the containment cap, the areas identified by Ecology and the Port as the Cascade Pole site extend south about 500 feet into the Weyerhauser log yard, west to the shoreline, and ends about 100 feet short of the restaurant parking lot (see figure above).

The primary contaminates at the Cascade Pole site are dioxins/furans, chlorinated phenols, and carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (cPAHs). Most Cascade Pole documents written by Ecology refer to these substances as suspected human carcinogens. The most recent document on Cascade Pole is an engineering report written in May, 2009 using the cPAH designation.

Work on remediation of the Cascade Pole site started in the late 1980's and continues today. The most contaminated area is surrounded by a "slurry wall" made up of an underground trench 2 feet wide, averaging 23 feet deep and dug a few feet into a layer of fine-grained sediments that underlay this area. This trench is filled with a clay slurry mixture. Almost the whole area has been capped with asphalt. The groundwater inside the slurry wall is constantly pumped, treated, and returned to Puget Sound. Over $29 million has been spent to remediate the site.

There are at least two important questions about the long term viability of the Cascade Pole remediation. First, because the design requires the ground water inside the slurry wall to be constantly pumped and treated, what happens as rising tides, and eventually sea level, overwhelms this system? There are many toxic waste sites on the Puget Sound shoreline, however, sea level rise is not currently part of site remediation planning. In addition one should consider the potential impact of a catastrophic earthquake on the slurry wall and other toxic waste remediation features and whether they will ultimately fail.

Some people say the site is still so toxic it should all be fenced and posted with warning signs or the material removed to an upland location. Others say all of Budd Inlet is known to be contaminated but this site is relatively safe as long as long as you don't dig in the sediment or eat shellfish. Many of us who live here have given little thought to the impacts of the Cascade Pole site on the health and safety of Budd Inlet.

To receive updates on NorthPoint planning from the perspective of citizens supporting a balance between development and public access, contact northpointolympia@gmail.com.

Monica Hoover is a local citizen interested in Port of Olympia shoreline land use issues.


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