Brownfields Update for the Pacific Northwest

On a clear day, visitors to Bellingham, in the northwest corner of Washington state, enjoy views of a sparkling Bellingham Bay.

Few would guess that just below the surface lies a toxic problem decades in the making. Like other port communities across the U.S., Bellingham residents and businesses once used their bay as a dumping ground.

The city built three separate landfills at the water’s edge. Meanwhile, a pulp and paper mill leached mercury into the water as part of the chemical process of bleaching paper. Wood treatment plants leaked other toxic chemicals into the water. And that’s not counting the environmental damage done by a food processor, bulk petroleum storage facilities and ship builders.

“It was a standard practice at the time,” says Lucy McInerney, environmental manager with Washington state’s Department of Ecology. “Now we have a legacy of environmental problems.”

But fixing those problems has proven particularly difficult along the waterfront. A host of environmental agencies, both federal and state, lay claim to the offshore areas in need of rehabilitation. And that can make moving forward on vital cleanup projects seem like everything is done in slow motion.

Fortunately for Bellingham, the federal government launched an innovative program to help. In 2004, the Port of Bellingham became one of just three designated portfields. (The pilot project also includes the Port of New Bedford in Massachusetts and the Port of Tampa in Florida.)

The initiative is a partnership between EPA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and five other federal agencies.

Where cleaning up contaminated land to redevelop a brownfield can be a complicated process, maritime areas add another layer of complexity. With so many federal regulatory agencies as stakeholders, in addition to their state counterparts, disagreements and bottlenecks are routine. Agencies look at everything from maintaining navigable channels to protecting habitat.

In the Northwest, salmon recovery efforts also slow permits down. Getting the green light to clean up a polluted body of water can take anywhere from five to seven years-far longer than a traditional, upland brownfield site.

But portfields do more than smooth a bumpy permitting process. They’re also a commitment to helping ports retool themselves for growing waterfront commerce. Maritime trade is expected to double by the year 2020, according to EPA.

“What we’re trying to do is get these properties cleaned up and ready for redevelopment so we can meet the demands of whatever the market brings to Bellingham,” says Mike Stoner, environmental director for the Port of Bellingham.

The possibilities include: expanding the existing U.S. Coast Guard station to help with border patrol as well as creating a waterfront campus for Western Washington University. There are also plans for adding marina capacity that builds on Bellingham’s strong boating community.

Stoner knows well the challenges presented by 11 separate contaminated properties. But he’s also enthusiastic about the possibilities that come with Bellingham’s growing reputation as a hip place to live, thanks to its proximity to Vancouver, B.C., and Seattle, along with a thriving university and prime real estate that looks out on both mountains and water.

Bellingham’s reputation as a progressive, can-do kind of city helped it land the portfields designation in the first place.

In 1996, concern over the condition of Bellingham Bay sparked the Bellingham Bay Demonstration Project. A multi-organizational effort, it included a host of federal and state agencies as well as two Indian tribes.

“We were looking to expedite the cleanup of contaminated sediments and wanted to come up with a comprehensive strategy for Bellingham Bay,” says McInerney, the Ecology engineer who also served as co-manager of the demonstration project.

The state-led effort brought different agencies together to plan a strategy that worked for everyone-integrating everything from sediment cleanup to controlling pollution sources to habitat restoration and land use.

Four years after the group was formed, taskforce members issued the Bellingham Bay Comprehensive Strategy in 2000 to help guide cleanup and habitat restoration. Since then, five projects have been completed under that strategy-with 11 more to go.

These days, the port is moving forward with one of its biggest projects yet: cleaning up 137 acres of polluted industrial land left behind when the Georgia-Pacific pulp and paper mill closed in 2001. The port acquired the property last year. Cleaning it up is expected to cost between $75 and $85 million, with the state Department of Ecology paying half.

“The portfields benefit we’re getting is not so much financial but in terms of agency support,” Stoner says.

And that can mean the difference between getting a project done, or going nowhere fast.