On the shore of Seattle's Harbor Island, a giant clamp grips the top of a black, oily piling and vibrates it with a deafening sound.
Moments later, the decades-old, 30-foot-long piling is plucked from the mud.
The sweet, greasy stench of creosote wafts through the air as the pole is heaped on a stack and smashed to bits.
It is a process that will be repeated 9,000 times at the old Lockheed Shipyard -- one of three polluted spots on Harbor Island and in West Seattle where cleanup efforts are in full swing.
"The cleanup of these contaminated areas is absolutely critical to improving marine health in Puget Sound," said Lori Cohen of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund program, which has oversight of the projects.
Harbor Island, built in the early 1900s, has served as a hub for commerce and is still home to shipbuilders and oil terminals. But decades of industrial activity poisoned the island, leading to its Superfund designation 20 years ago.
Cleanups in the '90s focused on the island's tainted soil. In recent years, the focus has been on the polluted shoreline.
At Lockheed Shipyard, an old pier four football fields long is being removed, contaminated sediment dredged and the shoreline returned to a more fish-friendly state.
After the pilings are pulled, 135,000 cubic yards of muddy goo will go to an Oregon landfill.
In some areas, sediment contaminated with arsenic, copper, lead, mercury and PCBs extends more than a dozen feet deep. There, the top 5 feet will be removed and covered with clean sand, rocks and pebbles. By February, the work should be done, and native vegetation will be planted along the shoreline.
At Harbor Island's Todd Pacific Shipyard, some 175 Navy ships, commercial vessels and ferry boats are cleaned and repaired each year. Workers there are "replumbing" the shipyard to capture polluted runoff.
Before the $1 million project, about 13 million gallons of stormwater a year was running into the river and Puget Sound, with only a fraction collected for treatment.
When the project is done, all of the water will be captured, held in a settling tank and then pumped into the county sewer system.
Next year, workers will start removing three piers, dredging 200,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment and rebuilding a pier to make it environmentally safe. The shipyard, which will continue to operate, will pay the estimated $12 million tab.
Across from the island in West Seattle, work is under way to clean up an old wood-treatment plant.
After almost 90 years of operation, the area is contaminated with creosote, metals and pentachlorophenol, a preservative. Some of the sediment will be dredged and 58 acres will be capped with clean sand.
The work, which should cost about $20 million, will be completed in up to five years.
It is being paid for by Pacific Sound Resources, the new name of the plant's former owner, although EPA officials believe they will need to tap into Superfund dollars to cover the costs.
source: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/135356_harbor16.html 16aug03
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