PORT ANGELES — Construction of a 42,000-square-foot medical office building on the Olympic Medical Center campus was interrupted early this month due to soil contamination, said Eric Lewis, the hospital’s chief executive officer.
The $16.35 million project, conducted by Kirtley-Cole Associates LLC of Everett, will include examination rooms, doctors’ offices, laboratories and primary-care and urgent-care clinics.
The contaminated soil was discovered Feb. 3, delaying construction through Feb. 8 while the soil was removed, Jeff Anderson, OMC marketing manager, said Friday.
Right under building
The contaminated soil was “right underneath the building, and as we were putting in footings, we discovered it,” Lewis said.
“Once we knew about it, we had to clean it up, which we have done. Now we have backfilled it with rock and soil.”
Construction at the site began in early August with about $70,000 worth of improvements to sewer and stormwater systems.
Despite the brief hiccup, the building is still slated to be completed as scheduled in October, Anderson said.
“This will not delay the building,” he said.
“Apparently, there was an old diesel tank that had leaked for many, many years,” Lewis said.
The tank, or tanks, had been removed long ago, Anderson said.
“No tanks were found,” he said. “We do not know what happened to the tanks.
Costly fix
“As we started to clean this up, it became a big hole,” Lewis said.
“It wound up being 40 feet wide, 40 feet long and 18 feet deep of contaminated soil” — the equivalent of 1,067 cubic yards.
“That is really expensive because we had to excavate it, put it into trucks and we had to ship it to Tacoma to a place that is going to clean up the soil because we have to restore the soil,” Lewis said.
“Our current rough order of magnitude is a $150,000 change order for this. It definitely was a big project, and it did slow us down for a period of days. Once we get a final amount, we will come back to the board with that change order.”
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Reporter Chris McDaniel can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56650, or cmcdaniel@peninsuladailynews.com.
