Brownfields Update for the Pacific Northwest

A recently completed park on the Thea Foss Waterway in Tacoma illustrates the challenges of funding green space Brownfields redevelopment and the combination of funding sources and technical resources  often brought together to complete such projects.

The Foss Waterway is a master planned waterfront community in downtown Tacoma formerly a thriving, bustling, heavily populated industrial center.  The area was created over a hundred years ago by the railroads that filled in part of the waterway to create flat, developable land at the foot of the Tacoma hills. Similar to other situations all over the country, over time, the industrial users declined, leaving vacant buildings and the contaminated properties now called Brownfields.

In the early 1990s, the City of Tacoma purchased much of the properties and began transforming the area into a mixed-used waterfront community. The Thea Foss Development Authority was created in 1996 to manage the planning and redevelopment of the 1.5-mile shoreline and its associated properties. Guidance for the area’s redevelopment came from the Tacoma Shoreline Master Plan and the growth management goals of the City, both requiring that natural areas, or green space be created in the Waterway development.

The Development Authority and the City chose to purchase and develop into a park a privately-owned 1.4-acre site along the Waterway’s esplanade. They were well aware of the challenge and expense of redeveloping a contaminated property into green space and the concurrent lack the return on investment that is an incentive to private Brownfields redevelopment.  In order to make the project viable, they sought assistance from the Department of Ecology (Ecology).

Ecology became involved in the early 2000s by performing an RP (responsible party) search and investigating the possibilities presented by insurance archeology. However, neither path produced positive results. The only asset of the private owner was the land itself and there were no operative insurance policies that could cover reimbursement for the needed cleanup. Ecology then took the step of funding the work through the Clean Sites Initiative, whose purpose is to remediate “orphan” sites where either there is no responsible party or the liable parties do not have adequate resources.

The Phase II environmental site assessment revealed the property to be contaminated with heavy hydrocarbons and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Ecology assumed that the contamination could be traced to a former coal gasification facility upland from the future park. PAH contamination is common in areas where sludge-like by-products of a gasification process were used as fill material.

By chance, the site’s owner found an old newspaper article from the 1920s that indicated a company called Standard Chemical had been located on the property. This led to a photo search at the state history museum that uncovered fascinating photographs of the facility that had been taken by a local photographer, Marvin Boland, who lived in Tacoma from 1915 until his death in 1950.

The photos were useful to Ecology in the site investigation and subsequent cleanup. For example, a photo showing large tanks on a wharf on the property led to the discovery of “hot spots” of contamination in the sediments underneath.

The cleanup took place in the winter of 2002-2003 at a total cost of $3 million, considered a reasonable cost, considering the complexity of the site and the in-water work required. In the years since, the City has funded and overseen shoreline restoration and the creation of wildlife habitat at the park. Additional funding for the project has been received from the Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office and the Washington Department of Transportation.

To pay for the upkeep of the park, the Development Authority collects fees from the landowners of the development through assessments related to their land titles. This somewhat unique mechanism does not require taxpayer support.

Other interesting aspects of the park are huge trellises constructed from salvaged Douglas fir timbers that date back to the early 1900s. The timbers were recovered from a mile- long warehouse at the Port of Tacoma that was deconstructed after being damaged by the earthquake of 2002.

As a postscript to this story, the Clean Sites Initiative that funded the bulk of the cleanup has unfortunately fallen victim to Washington’s state budget shortfalls. It is unknown when funds may be readily available for the state-lead cleanups funded by Ecology or through grants to local governments.

For more information about this story, contact:

Marv Coleman, Site Manager/Inspector
Toxics Cleanup Program, SWRO
P.O. Box 47775
Olympia, WA 98504-7775
360-407-6259
mcol461@ecy.wa.gov