PORT ANGELES – The city wants to know how the community thinks the Rayonier property should look after the site’s ongoing toxic waste cleanup project is finished.
So City Manager Mark Madsen has started what he describes as “an aggressive program” focusing on future uses of the 75-acre site at the end of Ennis Street.
“The city of Port Angeles is uniquely positioned to convene all the parties involved at the site,” he said.
This first of a three-phase program is being funded by a $50,000 grant from the state Department of Ecology that was accepted by the City Council in April.
The first phase, which will last until the end of summer, includes convening what are described as “stakeholders” in the site’s redevelopment.
They will discuss ideas for future use of the site after the cleanup project is completed, she said.
The city began that first phase last week by inviting some of those stakeholders to work with Nathan West, principal planner, as well as Madsen and Pierce, Pierce said.
After redevelopment ideas are identified, the next steps in the first phase are creating identifiable milestones in the process followed by a final report to Ecology later this summer, she said.
A page on the city’s Web site, www.cityofpa.us, also is being developed to let the public follow the process.
The second phase, as yet unfunded, will produce a practical cleanup and redevelopment plan as part of a broader harbor-wide strategy, Pierce said.
It is envisioned that a third phase will begin work on a new harbor resource management plan, she said.
The 75-acre Rayonier property at 700 S. Ennis St., which closed March 1, 1997, still has low levels of carcinogenic dioxins and other toxins generated over 68 years as a mill – now dismantled – that transformed wood to pulp.
The property is in the seventh year of a toxic-waste cleanup project supervised by Ecology, Rayonier and the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe.
A draft of the remedial investigation report for the site’s marine environment could be released for public comment this summer.
The draft of the remedial investigation report for the uplands environment was released for public comment in October.
Rayonier still owns the property and controls access to it, although it has been marketed since 2001.
So any plan that comes out of this redevelopment process couldn’t begin without approval from either Rayonier or whoever buys the property.
Rayonier could sell the property now, but that will be easier to do once it is cleaned up.
Once it is cleaned up and sold, Rayonier won’t control the property or redevelopment plans for it.
So the future owner, rather than Rayonier, will have control over what happens with the property after it is cleaned up, said Dana Dolloff, environmental affairs director for the Florida-based company.
If the city can recruit a buyer for the property through this process, that would be good news for the company, he said.
“We want to see what the city is proposing but we certainly are interested in moving the cleanup forward.
“I’d be surprised if this process did not come up with something we’d be interested in,” Dolloff said.
“I’m looking forward to this. It’s something good to have going on,” he said.
But the Elwha will continue to have an interest in the property following any sale because of the ancient Klallam village of Y’nnis located on the site, said Larry Dunn, Rayonier cleanup coordinator for the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe.
A plaque noting the presence of the former fishing village and burial site has stood on the site since February 1972.
“First, Rayonier must get a buyer interested in redeveloping the property, but what it will be used for is going to be an issue,” he said.
“If the new owner excavates, then the tribe probably will have an issue.”
“There’s cultural resources that must be protected and maintained,” he said.
If city can find someone who wants to develop the site, then they can establish cleanup levels matching that use, Dunn said.
But the minute excavation begins where the village and graveyard lie, the developer will be into artifacts and the work will stop, he said.
“The tribe’s interest is, and always will be, the ancestral resources,” Dunn said.
“We do want and need to preserve and protect those resources.”
Beyond what lies below the property’s large parking lot, there’s another burial site where tribal members killed off by the introduction of European diseases are buried, he said.
“No matter who buys, they must consider the cultural resources because that is very important to the tribe,” Dunn said.
The $50,000 grant funding this first phase of the program is part of Gov. Chris Gregoire’s “Puget Sound Initiative.”
Ecology officials have asked the city to develop a coordinated approach for redeveloping the site following the cleanup.
In December 2005, the city also applied, unsuccessfully, for a $350,000 federal grant for the same purpose.
Madsen told the City Council at that time that no toxic site in the nation has been cleaned up without a plan to redevelop it afterward.
The lack of a redevelopment plan also makes it more difficult to gain approval for cleanup, he said.
