SEATTLE — Seattle’s only river has been polluted for decades. Studies show harmful PCB chemicals in the lower Duwamish have even led to shorter life expectancies for those living along its shores.
But the Environmental Protection Agency has announced plans for a pricy and extensive cleanup project of the East Waterway, where the river meets Elliott Bay.
"What this does is, is put in motion a series of cleanup actions that will start in a couple of years, that will last 10 years. And the idea is to get as many PCBs as our legacy contaminants out of the Duwamish River as possible," said Casey Sixkiller, EPA Regional Administrator for the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.
The polluted water around Harbor Island has been on the EPA National Priorities List since 1983, and it is widely considered to be an environmental disaster.
"Highly industrialized over the last century," said Sixkiller.
But with these new plans, advocates now have a better idea of a timeline for completion and some hope for healing.
Harbor Island is a human-made industrial island across the water from SODO.
Most of the water in the Harbor Island Superfund site has already been cleaned up; the last section remaining is the East Waterway.
"We've sort of got the navigational beacons now on what we need to do," said Sixkiller.
The East Waterway is currently a chemical soup composed of nasty ingredients like arsenic, mercury, and what’s known as polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.
“PCBs are sort of the original forever chemical," said Sixkiller. "It's not so much in the water, it's in the actual soils beneath the water.”
The problem with PCBs, said Sixkiller, is they get into the tissues of the fish that swim there.
"And the reality is a number of people continue to fish in that river," said Sixkiller.
Studies show those people are getting sick in higher numbers.
So the EPA is calling on the Port of Seattle, City of Seattle, and King County to get "into active cleanup mode" because it will be a heavy lift.
"Really, a lot of it is just digging out the soil at the bottom of the river. And so this is one of the reasons why this is such an aggressive cleanup, you know? Over 120 acres of soil is going to be removed from the East Waterway," said Sixkiller.
But this is not the first time it’s been done.
From 2003 to 2005, one of the first sediment cleanups performed in the Elliott Bay area was in the East Waterway, when officials dredged 200,000 cubic yards of soil. This new plan, however, aims to dredge nearly five times more soil than that.