Property deal will help fund cleanup

EVERETT — The Everett Housing Authority has reached agreements in principle with the state, the federal government and Asarco that could lead to the construction of new homes on what is now one of the most toxic parcels of land in the state.

The housing authority will pay Phoenix-based Asarco more than $1.33 million for a fenced-off 4.7-acre site that contains soil that is up to 75 percent arsenic, and $2.09 million for 15 nearby homes that the company owns. The land used to house an Asarco smelter.

Under the proposed deal, Asarco would begin cleaning up the site in June. Construction of 85 single-family detached homes, duplexes and townhouses would begin in spring 2005. Seven of the 15 homes the housing authority proposes to buy would be demolished to help make way for new housing, and the other eight would be remodeled and sold, said Bud Alkire, the housing authority’s executive director.

Instead of building affordable housing, as originally planned, the housing authority would sell the land to a private developer for market-rate housing. The agency determined that it could not build affordable housing on its own without losing money, Alkire said.

The housing authority normally does not get involved in market-rate housing. But it wants the Asarco site cleaned up because it owns several nearby housing developments, including Grandview Homes and Baker Heights.

"We are ultimately affected by what happens at this site, and unless this is done now, we’re concerned it won’t be done in the foreseeable future," Alkire said.

Financially troubled Asarco has said it needs to sell the land to give it enough money to clean up the site.

The cleanup will cost Asarco $4 million to $5 million, said Kevin Rochlin, a project manager for the federal Environmental Protection Agency. To cover the rest of the costs, the state Department of Ecology said Tuesday it would pay the final $1 million in cleanup costs.

The state feared that, without the money, the site might not have been cleaned up enough for residential housing, said David South, Everett site manager for the Ecology Department. Transforming a toxic site to inhabitable land is a key part of the department’s mission, he said.

"We have a neighborhood that has been emptied of its residents," Ecology Department spokesman Larry Altose said, referring to the ground-zero look of the fenced-off area. Inside the fences are the bare foundations of 22 homes that were demolished in the late 1990s because of the contamination.

"This allows for the land to be brought back into productive use," said Tom Aldrich, Asarco’s vice president for environmental affairs.

Altose said that once the site is cleaned up, the state and Asarco will begin discussing how and when to clean up large tracts of nearby land. Asarco and the Ecology Department have disagreed on how much land the company has responsibility for.

As part of the complex agreements, the EPA is allowing Asarco to send contaminated dirt from Everett to a toxic-waste dump in Pierce County, which saves the company millions of dollars over sending it out-of-state.

In addition, the EPA is letting the company use $1 million from a toxic-waste cleanup fund to remove the dirt from Everett. The money is Asarco’s, but the EPA is overseeing how the company will clean up more than two dozen toxic-waste sites around the country.

"If this is pulled off, this is a pretty amazing deal that has been put together," Rochlin said.

As part of the agreements, Asarco would clean up the yards of occupied homes that are scattered among the 15 houses that the housing authority is buying. Alkire said the housing authority wants to make sure the land it is selling to a developer does not border contaminated land.

To ensure that there’s enough money for the cleanup, the housing authority will pay the contractor that Asarco will use for the cleanup $1.3 million of the removal costs. That money — which will help tide Asarco over financially for several months — will later be deducted from the $3.42 million the housing authority would pay Asarco for the land, Alkire said.

Reporter David Olson: 425-339-3452 or dolson@heraldnet.com.

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