PORT ANGELES — Clallam County officials are demanding that the state get a landfill permit for a quarry before any more “contaminated” soil from the Department of Transportation’s graving yard construction site is dumped there.
The county’s environmental health department on Thursday ordered the state to stop dumping what it labeled contaminated dirt at the Fields Shotwell quarry west of Port Angeles.
The order was made because the quarry doesn’t have a landfill permit, county officials said.
About 12,000 cubic yards of soil were hauled from the graving yard site on Marine Drive to the quarry before work on the giant dry dock project was stopped Tuesday for an unrelated reason: ancient Indian remains or artifacts were found on the property.
The $17 million graving yard, on Marine Drive just east of the Daishowa America Ltd. paper mill, will be used to build components for the Hood Canal Bridge replacement project of 2006.
Jennifer Barnhill, Clallam County environmental health director, said county officials needs to know more about the Shotwell quarry and the soil’s final use before allowing the dirt to go there.
“That’s why we need to go through the landfill permit process,” Barnhill said.
“It may very well be a good site for that soil, but we don’t know (and) haven’t gone through that process.”
But the quarry can’t take any contaminated soil until a permit is issued.
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The rest of the story appears in the Friday/Saturday Peninsula Daily News.