EVERETT – It is perhaps the most infamous dirt in Everett, and it’s a safe bet that no one is sorry to see it go.
But its departure means the beginning of an end of an era for Everett, and a prettier look for the northern part of town where new homes are expected to replace barbed-wire fences.
More than a century after concentrations of arsenic first contaminated land just south of the Highway 529 bridge, a barge is ready to start hauling the dirt to a high-tech toxic-waste container in Pierce County.
The barge will probably leave within the next day or two, said Clint Stanovsky, Everett site manager for Asarco Inc., which operated a smelter on the land from 1904 to 1912 and is responsible for the cleanup of its toxic remnants.
The barge-load will be the first of up to 20 that will leave from the Snohomish River just west of the bridge through the end of September, he said. Between 50,000 and 60,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil will be taken away.
Behind Stanovsky loomed two gigantic piles of arsenic-laced dirt that sat under 120- by 70-foot vinyl tarps held up by steel poles. The soil is stored there before being loaded onto the barge.
The barge will travel down Possession and Puget sounds to Pierce County. It cannot dock directly on shore because of the shallow water. So a small barge is parked between it and the shoreline.
At the Everett site, vinyl sheets that advertise Coors Light and Fred Meyer sit under the conveyer belts, but Asarco hasn’t convinced the two companies to sponsor its cleanup.
The company was required to install the sheets to ensure that any soil that might fall from the belts would not end up in the Snohomish River, Stanovsky said. The sheets are sections of used billboards.
The first barge-loads of soil to leave Everett will have medium to high levels of arsenic contamination and will end up in the toxic-waste container in Ruston, near Tacoma. Trucks will carry it from shore to the container.
The soil in subsequent barges will have lower, but still toxic, levels of arsenic. That dirt will be used as fill for a redevelopment project in Tacoma and Ruston. A high-tech cap will be built above the soil in Pierce County to prevent contamination, Stanovsky said.
The redevelopment of the Everett site will not have a cap, which is why the soil cannot stay here. In Everett, two feet of clean soil will be dumped on top of the redevelopment area.
The excavation of the Everett smelter site will make way for up to 85 homes. The Everett Housing Authority is paying Asarco $3.42 million for the land and is planning to sell it to a private developer.
The first batch of contaminated dirt already left Everett. In early July, trucks began taking the most severely contaminated soil – with an arsenic concentration of more than 30,000 parts per million – to a toxic-waste storage facility near Grand View, Idaho.
Asarco hopes to finish its cleanup of the Everett site by October. Construction of the new homes is scheduled to begin as early as the spring of 2005.
Reporter David Olson: 425-339-3452 or dolson@heraldnet.com.
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