PORT ANGELES — It was once the site of the biggest private employer in Clallam and Jefferson counties.
Today it’s a strategic, 75-acre spit that forms the largest available waterfront property on the North Olympic Peninsula.
A Rayonier pulp mill operated on the spit, just east of the Port Angeles downtown, for 68 years, until it closed March 1, 1997.
Today what’s left is a four-acre dock, a flattened mass of dirt, shards of metal from buildings and machinery torn down and sold for scrap — and pockets of PCBs, dioxins, arsenic, cadmium, mercury, lead and other hazardous contaminants.
But one day — if the seemingly endless, state-supervised cleanup is ever completed — it may be the site of new industry — or a marina or shops and homes.
A long-term goal of the new Port Angeles HarborWorks Development Authority is to acquire the mill site, oversee its cleanup and market it, says the group’s board chairman, Orville Campbell.
Revenues from the property would be used to pay back loans from the city of Port Angeles and the Port of Port Angeles that are likely to be requested to fund the development authority, Campbell said Tuesday.
“The strategic plan for acquiring the property has not been laid out,” Campbell said, adding that it may be years before the details are worked out.
“The plan is to acquire the property [from Rayonier Inc.],” he said in an interview.
“We would enter into some kind of acquisition arrangement with Rayonier.
“I don’t know what the agreement will look like yet.”
