EVERETT — Three years ago, Chuck Seider rounded up a group of volunteers to clean up thousands of old tires from Japanese Gulch, but his plans were railroaded by bureaucratic red tape.
Now, the state is picking up where Seider left off.
The state Department of Ecology is moving forward with plans to clean up dozens of tire dumps around Washington, including the one in Japanese Gulch, a swath of woods and wetlands between Mukilteo and Everett.
Seider, a Mukilteo resident, would have done it in 2005, but the city of Everett and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, which owns property in the gulch, had concerns about safety and liability issues.
“I’m really glad it’s going to happen, but I’d hate to see what the bill’s going to be for it,” said Seider, a former Mukilteo planning commissioner. “I could have done it for free.”
The state recently signed a $1.2 million contract with two companies to remove roughly 630,000 tires from 47 sites. The tire cleanups are being paid for using the state’s Waste Tire Removal Account, which has been funded by a $1 tax on new tires since 2005.
People who frequent Japanese Gulch have estimated that as many as 3,000 tires litter the streambed that begins near Highway 526 and runs north through Everett and Mukilteo to Possession Sound.
Old car bodies, rusted barrels and large chunks of concrete are among the debris that can be seen toward the upper end of the gulch.
Reporter Scott Pesznecker: 425-339-3436 or spesznecker@heraldnet.com.
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