Cleaning Up: Small rural sites are big deals, too

By Seth Preston, communications manager, Toxics Cleanup Program

Large cleanup sites – both in terms of physical size and amounts of pollution – capture a lot of public attention. For example, big, old industrial sites around Puget Sound and other large urban areas come to mind.

Eastern Washington Clean Sites Initiative locations

But cleaning up relatively small sites in rural communities often can have just as big of a positive income for those communities’ environment, economy and quality of life.

That’s where the Toxics Cleanup Program’s Eastern Washington Clean Sites Initiative comes in.

The initiative takes in a variety of polluted properties – from an old mill in Cashmere to a deteriorating gas station in Buena, and from a former hard chromium electroplating operation near Walla Walla to a Stevens County site contaminated by wood-treating chemicals.

The reason behind this work is simple: Every community matters. Every cleanup site matters.

It all adds up to help improve, restore and protect this one Earth we have.