The state Department of Ecology has decided to require Glacier Northwest to provide extensive public review and comment as the corporation devises a plan for how it will handle arsenic-laced soil at its mining site on Maury.
Citing intense public interest in the way the company removes the chemical-laden soil, the state agency also said it will use a process that requires agency scientists and experts to play a much more active role in Glacier’s development of its clean-up plans.
The move marks a shift by the Ecology Department. The agency had previously said Glacier could go through the agency’s voluntary clean-up program, which allows for little public involvement and minimal agency oversight.
But after a 90-minute meeting with the head of Preserve Our Islands (POI) and a state lawmaker three weeks ago, the Ecology Department wrote a letter to POI saying it would instead invoke its formal process under the state’s voter-approved toxic cleanup law.
“We recognize the Island residents’ deep concerns,” Jay Manning, the director of the state Ecology Department, said in a news release. “The formal cleanup option gives the public full view of the process and an opportunity to comment before Ecology makes decisions at each key step. We’ve heard many important questions about the very issues this process is designed to address.”
Pete Stoltz, who oversees permitting for Glacier, said the state’s decision to require the company to go through the formal process will likely have little impact on how it devises its plan for containing its contaminated soils. The company has already started to study the degree of contamination and assess different ways to dispose of it, he said.
“We’re not going from a standing start. It’s not a major change in path or approach,” he said.
The company is not disappointed by the state’s decision, he added. “It’s a more structured, more laid-out process. And that’s probably better for everyone,” he said.
But Amy Carey, who heads POI, and state Rep. Sharon Nelson (D-Maury Island), who attended the meeting as well, said that the decision suggests state officials are beginning to recognize the seriousness of the soil contamination issue. They also said the Ecology Department’s active involvement in Glacier’s cleanup plan could make a significant difference in the outcome of the process.
“It brings in a whole level of oversight that has not been there for more a decade,” Carey said.
Nelson, who founded POI more than a decade ago, said the decision also underscores long-standing community concerns.
“The community has objected for 12 years to the whole idea of a voluntary cleanup plan,” she said.
Glacier’s 235-acre site on the eastern flank of Maury contains what some say is the most arsenic-laden soil on the Island, a legacy of nearly a century of copper-smelting at the Arsaco plant in Ruston. The company’s property, a high ridge between Gold Beach and Sandy Shores, was in the direct path of the smelter’s plume. Fallout from the plume dropped other heavy metals onto the area as well, including cadmium and lead.
Today, the soil at Glacier’s site contains arsenic at a level of 400 parts per million, Carey said; a level considered clean in a residential area is 20 parts per million and in an industrial site 200 parts per million, she said.
The issue has come to a head because Glacier’s plans to dramatically expand its gravel-mining operation will require the removal of tons of topsoil — much of it contaminated — to get access to the gravel. Unlike soil in other parts of the Island, the dirt on Glacier’s site has been relatively untouched over the years, making its concentration levels of arsenic even higher, according to state officials.
The company has said it plans to contain the contaminated soil on the site in a huge berm that would ultimately measure 30 feet high and 2,100 feet long; a clay layer would line the bottom of what Glacier calls its “containment cell,” according to plans filed with regulatory agencies, and a synthetic layer would cover the top. Eventually, the company says, clean soil would be placed over the berm, and native vegetation would be planted over the huge mound.
Glacier officials say such on-site containment is standard industry practice.
But POI and other Glacier critics say on-site containment carries numerous hazards. Were the liner to fail, for instance, highly contaminated soil could leak out, creating run-off that could percolate into the aquifer that provides drinking water in the area or spilling into the nearshore habitat, where eelgrass beds provide shelter to young salmon and other fish.
As a result, Carey, Nelson and others have argued, Glacier should be required to take its contaminated soil off-site to a regulated landfill, where safe, long-term storage is more likely guaranteed.
Carey said the Ecology Department’s more active review of Glacier’s cleanup plans could result in a requirement that it dispose of its contaminated soils in a landfill.
“I think that’s a likely outcome. We’ve argued that it’s not legal, it’s not appropriate and that there’s great risk to our groundwater,” she said.
Larry Altose, a spokesman for the Ecology Department, said a landfill requirement “could be evaluated as one of the options.” The company’s plan to contain contaminated soil on site is an option as well, he said, but not “a foregone conclusion.”
“They’re going to have to make a plan, based on all of the scientific evidence, that’s best for the environment,” Altose said.
Meanwhile, the Seattle-King County Health Department is continuing its examination of the situation in an effort to determine whether the removal of contaminated soil essentially qualifies as the creation of a landfill, which is no longer allowed under county land-use regulations on Vashon, where drinking water is provided by a sole-source aquifer.
Manning, in his letter to Carey, said his agency would also look at another issue that Islanders have raised — whether Glacier has enough water to meet dust control requirements for the site.
“Glacier will need to provide evidence that it will have a reliable, adequate and legal supply of water to meet the project and cleanup demands,” he said.
Cleanup process will require public review
The Department of Ecology’s decision that Glacier Northwest must follow what’s called the formal process under the state’s Model Toxics Control Act will mean the public will be able to comment several times during development of a cleanup plan.
The phases, each of which entail public review, are:
• A remedial investigation, when Glacier undertakes a study of the contamination and its potential effect on health and safety;
• A feasibility study, when options for addressing the contamination are evaluated;
• A cleanup action plan, which entails a decision document identifying the best remedy for the site;
• The implementation of the remedy, or the physical work on the site to undertake the selected approach, and
• Ongoing review and periodic reports on the cleanup.
“We have to respond to every single issue that’s raised,” said Larry Altose, a spokesman for Ecology Department. “And sometimes, the comments cause us to change course.”
