Brownfields Update for the Pacific Northwest

A group of properties in the northern Idaho city of Sandpoint contaminated by years of industrial activities provide a good illustration of how time, parcelization, and public investment can slowly bring a large area of Brownfield properties back into reuse. The North Sandpoint Wood Treatment Facilities is the name given to the three properties, each with a long history of environmental investigative work related to their redevelopment that continues to this day.

Sandpoint (pop. approx. 8,300) is a small city in the north panhandle of Idaho located on the northern shore of Lake Pend Oreille. For many years Sandpoint was known as the utility pole capital of the west, producing the treated poles used for telephone and other utility lines. The facilities that produced the poles were located on the northern edge of the town in an area that has since become the heart of the city as development has pushed north beyond Sandpoint to the neighboring cities of Ponderay and Kootenai. The wood treatment facilities occupied three adjacent east-west properties totaling about 60 acres bisected by a rail line. Over the years, the properties have been subdivided and reused in a variety of ways. Some are still in light industrial use, others are in commercial use, i.e., retail and office space.

From the 1920s to the 1950s, the approximately 17-acre Division Street Wood Treating Site on the western side of the industrial area was where poles were treated with creosote and later, pentachlorophenol. Work practices and material handling common to that time caused contamination to the soil. Poles were placed in shallow, unlined clay pits in the southeast corner of the property filled with creosote solution for treatment and then were removed from the pits and loaded onto rail cars.

Starting in the late 1970s the Division Street property was parceled off with Bonner County purchasing the northern 2/3 of the property. The remaining southern portion was divided into four parcels. Contamination was first discovered on the furthest east of these parcels in the late 1980s when workers were excavating near the property during a road-widening project. Some of the workers fell ill due to the presence of chemical contamination buried beneath the area where it is suspected that the creosote pits had been located. In response to the discovery, contaminated soil was removed from the area.

The excavation incident prompted a decision by the EPA to conduct a Site Inspection at the North Sandpoint Wood Treating Facilities in 1996.  That site inspection and investigation report concluded that there was no immediate threat from the contamination and the EPA took no action. No further investigations of the site took place until 2006 when the owners of the parcel, operating a lumberyard, wanted to retire and sell their business to another building supply company. The sale was delayed when they could not pay for the needed environmental assessment.

To save the sale, the owners approached the City of Sandpoint, which in turn asked the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality for assistance. The DEQ allocated funds from its State Brownfields Program to pay for the site assessment. The outcome of that investigation was a determination that risks from the contamination beneath the site could be mitigated through the use of an environmental covenant under Idaho Title 55, Chapter 30 Uniform Environmental Covenants Act (UECA). The covenant specifies that to prevent exposure to the soil contamination at the property, no groundwater will be used for drinking water; the site cannot be rezoned as residential; and any excavation in the area will require special planning and oversight.

The property was sold, resulting in the retention of jobs and continued economic activity from the new building supply facility.

Owners of the approximately 33-acre L.D. McFarland property east of the Division Street site treated poles until the 1990s.  In 1996, the Land Remediation Act (LRA) was enacted by the Idaho legislature to establish a non-adversarial avenue for cleaning up sites.  It also established incentives for voluntary cleanup. This led to DEQ’s Brownfields Program in 2004. The property was the first to be enrolled in the Voluntary Cleanup Program, a new term for activities under the LRA.  For its first 10 years, the McFarland site was the only participant in the program.

Environmental investigations have determined that the contamination is confined to the center of the property where the pole treating activities occurred. This contaminated portion is being remediated through a chemical oxidation process pilot test.  Professional offices occupy the uncontaminated western portion of the site.

Still further east in the line of properties comprising the North Sandpoint Wood Treatment Facilities, the owners of the 12-acre B.J Carney site are pursuing cleanup funding through their general liability insurance policy which was issued before the addition of environmental exclusions.

For more information, contact:

Steve Gill, Brownfields Specialist
Idaho Department of Environmental Quality
2110 Ironwood Parkway
Coeur d’Alene, ID 83814
Phone: 208-666-4632
Cell: 208-818-5326