EVERETT – Residents of north Everett will have to wait until spring to see part of the old Asarco site cleared of arsenic-contaminated dirt.
Asarco Inc. had hoped to finish the cleanup of 18 acres of its old smelter site this month. But the company now expects to be only about two-thirds done when it suspends work for the season at the end of the month.
In June, the Everett Housing Authority agreed to pay Phoenix-based Asarco $3.42 million for 18 acres of land on which it hopes a private developer will build up to 85 houses, duplexes and townhouses.
The housing authority Friday began soliciting proposals from potential developers and hopes to select one by March, said the housing authority’s executive director, Bud Alkire.
Alkire said the delay in the cleanup is due in part to the housing authority’s lengthy review of documents related to the land purchase. In addition, it took longer than expected to set up the process of removing the soil, Asarco consultant Clint Stanovsky said.
Asarco is shipping almost all the dirt by barge to Pierce County, where it is dumped into a toxic waste container or used as fill for a redevelopment project that will include a high-tech cap to prevent contamination.
“This is not a standard kind of job,” Stanovsky said. “There were a lot of things to sort out.”
About 50,000 tons of dirt will be gone by the end of the month, he said. It’s unclear how much more will be taken away, because workers have to continually measure the arsenic concentration in the soil as they remove it. Only surface-level soil with arsenic levels of an average of fewer than 20 parts per million is suitable for residential development.
Although Asarco will continue work next spring, it has finished removing the most heavily contaminated soil, as required under a court order requested by the Department of Ecology, Stanovsky said.
The Ecology Department is taking soil samples in Everett to check that Asarco has complied with the order, said David South, Everett site manager for the department.
Asarco and the Ecology Department must eventually resolve a long-standing dispute as to what other contaminated land in north Everett the company is responsible for cleaning up. “We’ll decide best how to approach that after the first of the year,” South said.
As part of its agreement with the housing authority, Asarco will also clean up 22 homes that are interspersed with property bought by the agency, as long as the homeowners consent. The company has cleaned up one of the homes and plans to remove dirt from the other 21 next year, ahead of the 2007 deadline, Stanovsky said.
Reporter David Olson: 425-339-3452 or dolson@heraldnet.com.
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