the south park news

Just in from the state Ecology Department:

The current owners of part of the former South Park Landfill site in Seattle plan an interim environmental cleanup under a proposed amendment to a legal agreement with the Washington Department of Ecology (Ecology).

The city of Seattle – which once operated the landfill – and South Park Property Development LLC (SPPD) – the current owner of part of the site – plan the interim cleanup on 19 acres of the 40-acre contaminated site. The rest of the site is under separate ownership.

Ecology seeks public comment on the amendment, which would modify a 2009 “agreed order” that defines the process for studying the site’s contamination and proposing cleanup options. The planned partial cleanup under the proposed amendment would be an “interim action” under the state’s toxic site cleanup law. The overall investigation and planning for a final cleanup would continue.

As part of an environmental review under the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA), Ecology determined the proposed actions would not have a significant negative impact to the environment. The SEPA Determination of Non-Significance (DNS) and checklist are both available for public comment.

The agreed order amendment, SEPA documents, and other information about the South Park Landfill site are available at:

https://fortress.wa.gov/ecy/gsp/Sitepage.aspx?csid=1324
Seattle Public Library, South Park Branch, 8604 Eighth Avenue South, Seattle
Department of Ecology, 3190 160th Avenue Southeast, Bellevue, by appointment: 425-649-7190

Ecology will accept comments through May 30, 2013. People with comments or questions should send them to Jerome Cruz, Department of Ecology, 3190 160th Ave. SE, Bellevue WA 98008 or jerome.cruz@ecy.wa.gov. For questions by phone, please call 425-649-7094.

The proposed interim cleanup project has four parts:

Construct a landfill cap to protect public safety and health and to direct stormwater away from landfill materials.
Install systems to control landfill gas releases and stormwater drainage from the cap.
Restrict future use of the property to protect people against potential exposure to landfill materials and to avoid damaging the cap and the gas and stormwater control systems.
Monitor groundwater and landfill gases to evaluate the performance and effectiveness of the cleanup actions.

The property – in the 8100-8200 blocks of Second Avenue South – is the site of a municipal waste landfill, which was operated by the city of Seattle on King County-owned property. The landfill stopped accepting waste in 1966 when Seattle opened its South Transfer and Recycling Station. The landfill site, as currently known, includes the city’s station, property owned by SPPD and part of the Kenyon Business Park.

An auto-wrecking yard and truck storage facilities have also used parts of the property.

Environmental studies performed at the site have detected groundwater contamination from arsenic, iron, manganese, vinyl chloride and possibly dichloroethene and benzene. Contaminants of potential concern for soil include arsenic, lead, diesel and oil. Landfill gas – methane and carbon dioxide – also is present at the site.

Cleanup of the South Park Landfill site, located about 1,500 feet from the Lower Duwamish Waterway, contributes to a larger effort to control sources of contamination to sediments in the waterway. Ecology and EPA jointly oversee the Lower Duwamish Waterway cleanup site, approximately five miles of waterway upstream from Harbor Island. For more information about the overall Lower Duwamish cleanup, please see:
www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/tcp/sites_brochure/lower_duwamish/lower_duwamish_hp.html

We received a question about this crash, so in case others are wondering too – here’s what the State Patrol says in its media memo: A 51-year-old woman was killed and three other people went to the hospital because of a head-on crash on Northbound 99 just south of 14th Avenue South. The State Patrol narrative:

Vehicle 1 was southbound on West Marginal Place South.

Vehicle Two was northbound on State Route 99.

Vehicle One left the roadway to the right, driving through a chain-link fence and southbound into the northbound lanes of 99, and struck vehicle two head-on. Both vehicles came to rest in lanes one and two.

Vehicle One was a 2004 Chevrolet Colorado pickup, driven by a 44-year-old Tukwila woman who survived the crash. The other three victims were in Vehicle Two, a 2000 Dodge Caravan; the 51-year-old woman who was driving, identified as Vickey Tilson, died, and two passengers survived – a 58-year-old man and a 13-year-old boy.