EVERETT — The federal government Wednesday approved sending the most contaminated dirt from Asarco Inc.’s old north Everett smelter to a toxic-waste dump in Pierce County this year.
Money to pay for the cleanup would come from selling part of the land to the Everett Housing Authority, which plans to build affordable housing on the site.
Altogether, the financially troubled Phoenix, Ariz., company needs to dig out 5,000 truckloads of dirt from the most contaminated area of the smelter site east of Legion Memorial Golf Course.
The decision by the Environmental Protection Agency is part of the federal government’s oversight of how Asarco will clean up more than two dozen toxic waste sites around the country.
Asarco figures it will take about $3 million to clean up the Everett site. Under the federal rules, Asarco would be allowed to use $1 million it has set aside for cleaning up the toxic waste in Everett if the company can raise the other $2 million in some other way.
Hence, the land deal, which includes 15 homes Asarco owns near a 4.7-acre fenced-off area that contains the most contaminated soil.
If the deal falls through, the EPA would withdraw permission for Asarco to spend $1 million on Everett this year, said Kevin Rochlin, an EPA project manager.
"We don’t want to get halfway through the cleanup and then find out that the rest of the money for it isn’t coming through," he said. "This is not a done deal, but it’s something we are very hopeful about."
Asarco in October offered to sell the land and is asking for $3.4 million, said Bud Alkire, executive director of the Everett Housing Authority.
The agency has an exclusive option until April 1 to buy the land, and is researching whether the proposal is economically feasible, he said.
The agency would tear down six of the 15 homes — those bordering the most heavily contaminated land — and sell the other nine, Alkire said.
The agency hopes to build 85 single-family detached homes and duplexes, which would be sold at market rates primarily to working people with lower incomes, he said. Home buyers would probably have access to federal and state low-interest loans and help with down payments.
The housing authority views the project as a way to ensure that affordable housing is built on the site, Alkire said.
The agency wants an assurance from Asarco that the company will go further and take away all soil with an arsenic level of at least 150 parts per million so the site is safe for residential development, Alkire said. The agency also is asking the company to clean up 15 nearby privately owned homes.
"If you’re going to invest in a neighborhood, you want to make sure the entire neighborhood is cleaned up and nice to live in," he said.
The housing authority hopes to begin construction of the new homes by spring 2005.
It would borrow the money for the land and pay it back with earnings from sales of the houses it would build, Alkire said.
George Deane, a neighborhood activist who has lived near the Asarco site for more than 30 years, said he would have preferred only single-family homes. But he’s glad there are no plans to build condominiums and apartments, as he had long feared would happen.
"We’d rather not have duplexes, but as long as it’s not condos, we’ll settle for what we can get," said Deane, who can see the site’s chain-link fences topped with barbed wire from his back deck.
Inside the fences are the bare foundations of 22 homes that were demolished in the late 1990s because of underlying soil that is up to 75 percent arsenic.
Mayor Ray Stephanson said the housing authority’s plan "is a great fit for that neighborhood. It would blend in well with homes that are there."
"This has been on the minds of folks in that neighborhood for well over a decade," Stephanson added. "For them to see this sad chapter in Everett’s history come to a close is great news."
In October 2003, a Snohomish County Superior Court judge ordered Asarco to remove the Everett site’s most contaminated dirt — soil with arsenic levels of 3,000 parts per million or more — from the fenced area by October of this year.
Asarco did not get all it wanted from the EPA, said Tom Aldrich, the company’s vice president for environmental affairs in Phoenix.
Asarco had asked for $3 million from a $100 million EPA-controlled fund to ensure that the cleanup of the most contaminated soil in Everett would be completed this year, he said. Still, he was "optimistic" that the company can reach a deal with the housing authority.
The EPA also announced Wednesday that Asacro can spend $7.5 million this year to clean up the former Asarco smelter site in Tacoma and neighboring Ruston. The agency has long said it would not allow Asarco to send Everett’s dirt to the Ruston toxic-waste container until dirt from Pierce County goes in first.
Asarco would probably take the dirt to Ruston by barge, Aldrich said. It would be much cheaper for Asarco to take Everett’s dirt to Ruston than to an out-of-state dump.
Reporter David Olson: 425-339-3452 or dolson@heraldnet.com
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