Tuesday’s rain held off just long enough for almost two dozen Whatcom residents to tour the RG Haley cleanup site, a contaminated stretch of land along Bellingham Bay.
The site, home to several industrial plants throughout the 1800s and 1900s, was most recently used as a wood treatment plant by the RG Haley International Corporation. When the plant ceased operations in 1985, harmful chemicals remained, including petroleum hydrocarbons, pentachlorophenol (PCP), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and dioxins/furans in the soil, the groundwater, and the sediment.
Nearby contaminated sites, including the neighboring Cornwall Avenue Landfill, have also leached chemicals such as mercury into the soil and sediments.
“This is going to be a really wonderful transformation from a contaminated site to a public amenity.” — Amy Kraham, project manager
Tuesday’s tour, hosted by local environmental nonprofit RE Sources, featured speakers from the City of Bellingham’s Parks and Recreation department and the office of the city attorney, as well as representatives from the state Department of Ecology.
“We want to open up and facilitate conversations with Ecology staff and city staff so that people who have questions can go to them,” explained RE Sources North Sound Baykeeper and lead scientist Eleanor Hines.
Attendees were able to ask questions about the cleanup process and future plans for the site from those involved, including Amy Kraham, the project manager for the RG Haley cleanup.
“This is going to be a really wonderful transformation from a contaminated site to a public amenity,” said Kraham, who also serves as the senior assistant city attorney. “There’s a very robust regulator process to make sure that the contaminants don’t get out into the bay and that it’s protective of human health and the environment.”
Cleanup, which could take several years, involves excavating contaminated sediments from the water and stabilizing contaminated soils along the shoreline.
The end goal of the cleanup: the Cornwall Beach Park.
The site has a long way to go before Bellinghamsters can stroll through trails and enjoy the waterfront, though. Currently, the stretch of land is in phase four of the formal cleanup process through the state Department of Ecology: the engineering and design phase, which is expected to cost around $1.5 million. Construction is slated to begin toward the end of 2023 or the start of 2024, provided permits receive approval, Kraham said.
“It seems like it takes forever for these things to get done, but when you’re out here and you listen to what the history is, people can understand that lots of people have been working on it for many years,” she said.
RE Sources organized the tour, funded by a Public Participation Grant from the Department of Ecology, to coincide with ongoing public comment periods for the site.
“There’s a lot of technical documents involved and we find it a lot more engaging when we can get people actually out to the site to see it firsthand,” Hines said.
Kraham agreed.
“We feel its much better for folks to understand the documents when they’ve actually seen the site,” Kraham said. “We try to do these in conjunction with the public comment periods so that folks can see the site, read the documents, and then if they have some comments, they’ll be able to be more informed when they submit those comments.”
The public comment period will remain open until March 1.
“This is all of our waterfront, collectively, and we should all have a voice in it,” Hines said.
