PORT ANGELES — Rayonier Inc. has been cleaning up a portion of the defunct Peninsula Plywood mill site on Marine Drive — demolition of which is expected to begin in December — through several sets of owners and for more than two decades.
The environmental cleanup of groundwater and soil is a process the company has been engaged in for 22 years as a former owner of the plant at 439 Marine Drive.
Rayonier has been monitoring and abating a hydraulic oil spill that occurred underneath the mill when the company, as ITT Rayonier, owned the plant from 1971 to 1989.
Rayonier’s cleanup was mandated as part of an Oct. 31, 1990, state Department of Ecology remedial action order, Toxics Cleanup Program Regional Manager Rebecca Lawson said last week.
The cleanup order was requested by Rayonier and PenPly so Ecology could oversee and approve the cleanup, according to the order.
“They’ve been controlling the oil so it does not migrate,” Lawson said.
Carla Yetter, Rayonier’s corporate director of environmental affairs, did not return calls last week requesting comment on the cleanup.
The mill opened as Peninsula Plywood in 1941. The mill became a Rayonier affiliate for 18 years beginning in 1971.
It was sold to an Alaska-based corporation and renamed Kply in 1989. Kply shut down the mill in 2007.
It was reopened in March 2010, renamed Peninsula Plywood and then was shut down for good in December, owing the port, city of Port Angeles and state Department of Labor & Industries $2.4 million.
The Port of Port Angeles, which owns the land upon which the mill is located, plans to demolish the buildings there beginning this December.
verall contamination at the site of the Marine Drive mill “is not on the same scale” as that contained on the 75-acre site that Rayonier owns two miles east of downtown that was the site of a former pulp mill, Lawson said.
That property, which is on the Port Angeles waterfront, has been a state Department of Ecology-supervised cleanup site since 2000.
Pockets of contamination — PCBs, dioxins and other toxic chemicals — were left by the mill when it closed in 1997 after operating for 68 years.
Rayonier ran the pulp mill from the 1930s until its closure.
Earlier this year, the time line for the cleanup was pushed back to December 2014 because of a delay in the release of an Ecology study of pollution in the Port Angeles Harbor and because of an extension of the public comment period.
Rayonier has trucked off about 90 percent of the contaminated soil at the site east of Port Angeles in an overall cleanup effort that has cost the company $26 million, Yetter said in September 2011.
Marine Drive cleanup
According to the 1990 order for the Marine Drive property, petroleum hydrocarbons were present under the building near three hydraulic presses from which the hydraulic fluid leaked when Rayonier owned the mill.
The oil was floating on the groundwater surface under hydraulic presses and mixed with a gasoline plume which probably originated off-site, according to the order.
The plume extended 10 feet south, 45 feet east, 35 feet west and 70 feet north of the presses.
There also was an area of soil under the building that contained pentachlorophenol, also known as PCP.
The chlorinated insecticide and fungicide is used to protect timber but was not detected in the groundwater under the building, the order said.
The contaminants are under the floor joists and reachable only through a crawl space, “affording minimal human contact,” the order said.
Rayonier has excavated as much soil as possible with the building still standing, Lawson said.
“Now that there’s no more operations going on there, we’d like to get the building taken down so we can get to any addition cleanup that may need to be done.”
Nine groundwater monitoring wells installed in the vicinity of the hydraulic presses were dug before the 1990 order was issued, according to the order.
They allow the pollution to be monitored and the water table controlled, Lawson said.
Rayonier has been pumping out water, depressing the groundwater table to keep the oil from migrating, she said.
With PenPly gone, the port will become “a responsible party” for the cleanup, as is Rayonier, Lawson said, adding Ecology and the port will negotiate an agreed order that will cover the extent of the cleanup.
“We have not identified the cleanup action that will take place” on the 19-acre site, Lawson added.
Lawson said there also is a benzene and petroleum plume next to and under the mill, the source of which is unknown and may not be due to mill activities.
“There’s possibly more pentachlorophenol contained in the soil,” she added.
“The benzene plume will need to be evaluated as well.”
She said the port “seems very willing to move forward as quickly as we can” on the cleanup.
Port officials did not return calls for comment Saturday.
“If you are a past owner or operator, there needs to be credible evidence hat a release occurred during your ownership,” Lawson said.
“We do have that with Rayonier, and we are working on that. Any other operators do not really exist anymore.”
Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.