Cleaning up: Bellingham community active in Waterfront cleanup outreach

Cleaning up Central Waterfront site is transforming Bellingham Bay

Stroll along the Bellingham waterfront today and you’ll see changes – a new public park with an award-winning restored beach, a restored Granary Building, and a new downtown city block complete with new roads, sidewalks, and bike paths.

All of these changes were made possible by first addressing contamination from a history of industrial activity. 

Contamination cleanup work continues at multiple sites along the Bellingham waterfront, which will foster more changes over the coming years. One of those sites is the Central Waterfront site.

An aerial view of Central Waterfront site

Center of it all

The Central Waterfront site is located on the waterfront between two waterways. Four other Ecology cleanup sites are in the area: two in-water sediment sites (Whatcom Waterway and I & J Waterway) and two upland sites (Georgia-Pacific West and the Holly Street Landfill).

“Win-Win” outreach partnerships

RE Sources for Sustainable Communities hosted a walking tour of the Central Waterfront site on July 10. They shared information about cleanup activities and connected the community with agency staff managing the cleanup efforts. On this rainy, overcast July weekday, about 40 curious folks joined RE Sources, Ecology, the Port of Bellingham, and City of Bellingham as we all toured the site. We saw the working waterfront in action, learned of previous cleanup work, and discussed planned cleanup work.

We award Public Participation Grants to individuals and nonprofit organizations like RE Sources who do outreach about contaminated sites. They received a grant starting July 1 and hit the ground running just days later with a Central Waterfront site tour. Opportunities like this enable the community to see a cleanup site in person while having conversations with the people managing a cleanup. It’s a “win-win” – for us, other agencies and organizations, and most importantly for the community.

Our Public Participation Grants allow communities groups to do outreach,
like providing tours of cleanup sites on Bellingham Bay.

Future generations

We were lucky to have many youth join in the tour conversation. It served as a perfect reminder of why we do such cleanups, for current AND future generations.

Our youngest tour members innocently asked how they could help clean up the site while we walked. A great reminder to keep an eye out for litter while we work to address the chemical contamination.

A middle school group studying environmental and social justice in their summer program also attended the tour and learned how cleanups involve an entire community.

Public participation

Washington’s environmental cleanup law, the Model Toxics Control Action (MTCA), began as a public-initiated law and it turns 30 this year. Many steps of the MTCA cleanup process involve public participation. Your comments help inform Ecology’s management decisions.

Ecology invites you to review and comment on a draft Cleanup Action Plan and associated documents for the Central Waterfront site. The plan calls for a combination of removing and capping contaminated soil, monitoring conditions, and restricting uses.

During our first 30-day comment period, we received several requests for a public meeting, so we’ve scheduled a meeting for 6-8 p.m. on September 18 at  Bellingham Technology Development Center, 1000 F St., Bellingham. See this map for directions. 

You can submit comments online during our second 30-day comment period from September 16 – October 15, 2019.

Cleanup site information

• Fact sheet (pdf)
• Website
• Cleanup Action Plan

By Ian Fawley, Community Outreach and Environmental Education Specialist, Toxics Cleanup Program

Bellingham community comes together to celebrate environmental cleanup

By Krista Kenner, Communications Manager, Bellingham Field Office

   

Ecology Director Maia Bellon stands with Port of Bellingham,
Lummi Nation and elected officials as Mayor Kelli Linville cuts ribbon 

This summer, the Bellingham community is getting a little bit closer to having a revitalized waterfront.

On Wednesday, Ecology Director Maia Bellon joined Mayor Kelli Linville, Port of Bellingham Executive Director Rob Fix, and other elected officials to celebrate the kickoff of the Whatcom Waterway cleanup, a major milestone in the transformation of the Bellingham waterfront.

Community members and representatives from local and state agencies as well as tribes were excited to hear the details of the upcoming cleanup activities. After all, a lot of work, planning and collaboration has occurred to get us where we are today. 

Crews will begin dredging contaminated sediment in the Whatcom Waterway during the week of Aug. 24.

Over 159,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment will be pulled out—enough to fill a line of dump trucks for 78 miles, from Bellingham to Bothell. The dredging equipment mobilized this week in preparation for the project.

The contamination exists from industrial practices that pre-date modern environmental regulations.

The state-driven cleanup has to happen before the Port of Bellingham can succeed in rebuilding the waterfront economy and the City of Bellingham can realize its vision of transforming the waterfront to a vibrant part of its city center.

“This project will help us take a big step towards restoring Bellingham Bay and the greater Puget Sound, and in strengthening our endangered salmon recovery efforts,” said Bellon in her remarks.

Smaller-scale cleanup and habitat restoration projects have already made positive impacts in the aquatic environment of the Whatcom Waterway.

The cleanup will cost over $30 million. Ecology will pay for half of the cost through a state grant program.

“Starting this work is truly a milestone worth celebrating,” said Bellon. “Think of the beautiful waterfront that is in store. Think of the cleaner environment for fish and people. I can’t wait to come back and see it when the project is complete.”

Around the Sound: Sea grass thriving in former industrial area of Bellingham waterfront

By Dustin Terpening, communication manager, Bellingham

Industrial area of Bellingham waterfront.


Aerial view of Georgia Pacific, the log pond, and rafts of logs in the bay from 1977.


Buoys dot the surface of the log pond, supporting nets


Native eelgrass on the floor of the log pond.


Placing 43,000 cubic yards of clean sediment in the log pond.

Native eelgrass is returning to a former industrial area of the Bellingham waterfront known as the Log Pond, according to a recent study.

“Actually, it’s not just returning, it’s thriving,” said Mike Hogan, Port of Bellingham environmental analyst.

The sea grass provides some of the most important marine habitat within Puget Sound. It’s critical to the survival of salmon.

Explorations by a consultant working for the Port found three distinct, healthy beds of eelgrass in September 2013.

The waterfront site was used by the former Georgia Pacific pulp and tissue paper mill to store logs used in its papermaking processes. During the company’s operations from 1965 to 1971, mercury-contaminated wastewater was released directly into the Log Pond. Environmental regulations were a little different in the sixties - there weren’t many. 

Cleaning up the Log Pond

Today, the Log Pond is part of a state-driven cleanup project. The Washington Department of Ecology and the Port are developing long-term cleanup projects for the Whatcom Waterway, as well as the old Georgia Pacific property.

Work to restore the pond began in 2001, when Georgia Pacific covered and isolated six acres of contaminated sea floor with 43,000 cubic yards of clean sediment. This was an interim project completed ahead of the future site-wide project.

Sea life began to come back

Within two years of the interim work, visible signs of life started showing up - native eelgrass was naturally seeding and rooting again in the pond.

Then in 2005, with a $23,250 grant from Ecology, a local coalition of agencies helped foster the natural recovery of eelgrass with an experimental buoy system project. Seeds were naturally released from buoys and nets and implanted on the seafloor. Information learned from the project will be used to accelerate eelgrass recovery throughout Puget Sound.

Over the past nine years, both the area and density of the eelgrass beds have expanded.

 “We’re seeing great things happen in this former industrial area,” said Hogan. “Eelgrass is at the base of the food chain and it’s helping bring sea life back to this hampered waterway.”

Eelgrass provides refuge and food for juvenile salmon. Salmon can hide from predators and eat tiny animals that live in the eelgrass.

“We have a lot more work to do in this waterway and around the bay, but this is a great sign that we’re moving in the right direction,” said Lucy McInerney, Ecology site manager for the Whatcom Waterway cleanup site.

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Eyes Under Puget Sound: Life is stressful at the bottom of Bellingham Bay

By Maggie Dutch and Valerie Partridge with the Marine Sediment Monitoring team

The communities of small invertebrates, also known as benthos, living in the sand and mud at the bottom of Bellingham Bay are showing signs of stress.

Bay-wide survey

We conducted a bay-wide survey in 2010 to characterize the sediment quality at the bottom of Bellingham Bay. As part of the survey, we collected sediment from 30 locations, then counted and identified the critters in each one.  

As benthic ecologists - scientists who study the sea floor and the animals that live there - we examined the number and types of species present, and compared them with other communities throughout Puget Sound. 

Adversely affected

Using the Benthic Index we developed, we classified the benthic communities at each of the 30 stations in Bellingham Bay as "adversely affected." The communities have been impacted in some way by either natural or human-influenced environmental stressors. 

It's unusual that every station in the study was adversely affected. 

Benthic indicators

Our ratings were based on consideration of the following indicators: 

• Total abundance: high
• This is the number of animals in each sample.
• Taxa richness: low
• This is the number of unique types of animals, or species, in a sample.
• Dominance: low
• This is the number of species making up 75 percent of the sample.
• Stress-tolerant species: common and highly abundant
• These are the animals that can survive or thrive in environments that are polluted or have harsh conditions.
• Stress-sensitive species: rare or absent
• These are the animals that need pristine conditions to survive.

What do the indicators mean?

Although high total abundance is often considered a sign of a robust community, it's not in this case. When high abundance is due to only one or a few species being present in high numbers, it can be a sign of imbalance. 

These conditions, when combined with abundant stress-tolerant and few stress-sensitive species, indicate that the benthic community is not healthy.

Marine worms

The high total abundance values were due to very high numbers of a few stress-tolerant polychaetes, or marine worms, called Aphelochaeta spp. They belong to the family of worms named Cirratulidae, which are sometimes called “spaghetti worms” for their masses of long, thin feeding tentacles that stretch across the surface of the sediment.
         

Aphelochaeta spp are often present in low numbers in benthic communities throughout Puget Sound, but can increase exponentially in number in areas that are impacted by natural or human-caused stressors. They survive and thrive in these locations, while more stress-sensitive species cannot. In such conditions, taxa richness and dominance values decline.

Dominant species

Aphelochaeta spp were the dominant benthic invertebrates at every station sampled, often with well over 1,000 individuals per 0.1 square meter (about one square foot) collected from each location.

Several other polychaete species were also dominant in Bellingham Bay, including Owenia johnsoni and stress-tolerant Bipalponephtys cornuta and Heteromastus filobranchus. Together, polychaetes contributed an average of 91 percent of the total benthos abundance in Bellingham Bay, an unusually high value for Puget Sound.
   

Some stress-sensitive species, which had been present in higher numbers during 1999 and 2006 regional sediment surveys were noticeably reduced in abundance or absent from the benthos in 2010. These include arthropods such as the amphipod (sand flea) Protomedeia spp, the ostracod (seed shrimp) Euphilomedes carcharodonta, the pea crab Pinnixa schmitti, and echinoderms such as the brittle star Amphiodia spp.

Marine monitoring website and info

More details about the sediment quality and benthos in Bellingham Bay examined in 1997, 2006 and 2010 can be found on the Marine Sediment Monitoring Team’s website, along with information on the design and implementation of the Puget Sound Ecosystem Monitoring Program (PSEMP) sediment monitoring component.

Report: https://fortress.wa.gov/ecy/publications/SummaryPages/1303034.html 

Pictures: http://flic.kr/s/aHsjPyZfQ3

Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc-PPq4fZU8&list=UUXP2cN0Qyp0JfDjU6zD7QaQ&index=101

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Oil seep now contained on Bellingham waterfront

---Dustin Terpening, communication manager, Bellingham Field Office---

For the past year there was a small portion of shoreline on the Bellingham waterfront where oil was seeping into Bellingham Bay.



That was until last week, anyway, when crews completed a project to contain the seep.

We worked with the city of Bellingham to develop a project that would temporarily contain the oil seep until a permanent cleanup project gets underway in 2015.

The oil began seeping in December 2012 from the shoreline at the south end of Cornwall Avenue, in an area known as the RG Haley cleanup site. The city immediately deployed a boom and absorbent pads to help contain the sheen on the water, and maintained it for the past year.



The six-acre cleanup site is contaminated with wood treatment chemicals and products from past industrial use.

To contain the seep, crews first cut down old pilings protruding from the beach.



Crews also removed large boulders and slabs of concrete.



Then a layer of specially mixed sand and clay was spread out on the beach. The sand/clay mix is designed to absorb oil while allowing water to pass through.



Then a layer of tough fabric and a thick layer of rocks were placed over the top to keep the sand/clay mix in place.



Crews began work at the beginning of November, and worked nights when tides were lowest. Work was completed on Wednesday, Nov. 13.

With the temporary fix in place, we’ll continue to work with the city to develop the final site-wide cleanup.

• Learn about more Ecology cleanup efforts on Bellingham Bay.
• See more Ecology photos on our Flickr Photostream

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Around the Sound: Derelict vessels in spotlight

By Seth Preston, Communications Manager, Toxics Cleanup Program

Boats abandoned around Puget Sound and in other Washington waterways pose significant environmental risks and possibly some big cleanup bills for taxpayers.

TVW’s “The Impact” program took a look this week at the problems that derelict vessels can cause. The report begins at about the 5:25 mark.

In the past two years, Ecology’s Spills Program had a major role in responding to two large-scale environmental problems caused by derelict vessels. In 2012, the fishing vessel Deep Sea (shown at right in a KIRO-TV image) caught fire and then sank near the fertile shellfish beds of Penn Cove off Whidbey Island. And in 2011, the old barge Davy Crockett was found leaking into the Columbia River.

Cleaning up those two incidents alone cost state taxpayers millions of dollars.

The Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has a derelict vessel removal program. Gov. Jay Inslee signed legislation earlier this year to boost efforts to clear such vessels from state waters.

In other environmental news, Ecology’s Lucy McInerney authored this guest editorial recently in the Bellingham Herald on some major cleanup work in and around Bellingham Bay.

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Around the Sound: Ratfish in the Sound and other news

By Seth Preston, Communications Manager, Toxics Cleanup Program

In its Pacific Magazine, the Seattle Times presents an in-depth look at the large population of ratfish and other species in Puget Sound.

• The Bellingham Herald has this piece on sampling planned at a cleanup site in Bellingham’s popular Boulevard Park. And here’s Ecology's original news release on the work.
  
  
• The Peninsula Daily News has this take on a tribal vision for the former Rayonier mill cleanup site in Port Angeles. The Rayonier site is drawing a lot of attention in Port Angeles these days – here’s some background on the site.

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Around the Sound: Bellingham barges demystified

By Katie J. Skipper, communications manager, Bellingham

We’ve been seeing some questions circulating about barges anchored in Bellingham Bay, and I thought it would be helpful to provide some information from our perspective.

Oil barges are regulated by state and federal law, which require operators to immediately report to Ecology and the Coast Guard any oil spills or illegal discharges to water. We have received no reports of any spills or discharges from these barges.

We regularly inspect fuel transfers over water to determine if the operations pose an environmental risk, and if they comply with state regulations.

Barge operators must notify the Vessel Traffic Service, operated by the U.S. Coast Guard, of their voyages and anchorages, of which Bellingham Bay is one. The fuel barges notify Ecology when they transfer cargo, and the facilities, such as refineries, notify Ecology when they load a barge or ship.

The barges you see in Bellingham Bay typically carry refined petroleum products such as gasoline or diesel fuel, although some large fishing vessels and refrigerated vessels also anchor there waiting to get to Bellingham Cold Storage.

Generally, these barges take on refined products from the refineries. They also may be used as product storage during refinery maintenance.

There was an increase in barge traffic during recent routine maintenance at Conoco-Phillips Ferndale Refinery, which required operations to be shut down at part of the plant. The refinery was storing partially refined product in the barges until maintenance was completed.

The barges don’t have engines for propulsion. They rely on tug boats to move around.
Bellingham Bay is a protected anchorage used primarily by tug and barge company K-Sea Transportation, although other companies sometimes use it, too.

K-Sea is not in the bunkering business, which means they generally do not refuel vessels from barges.

The straight scoop on Bellingham Bay cleanup funding

By Katie J. Skipper, Communications Manager, Bellingham Field Office

During legislative sessions, predicting budgets and project funding is a little like predicting the weather – next year. So we understand why some people might be confused about what’s going on with funding for Bellingham Bay cleanup projects.

Hopefully, we can clear things up, though we won’t know all of the answers until legislators and the Governor settle on the state’s final budget.

One thing we do know is that no state cleanup money has been taken away from Bellingham Bay sites. Through grant agreements, state funding is committed to reimburse up to 50 percent of local government cleanup costs at many sites. Other sites don’t have a grant agreement in place yet, so no money is committed to them.

The state has committed $24 million in a grant agreement with the Port of Bellingham for Whatcom Waterway cleanup – the largest and most complex of the 12 Bellingham Bay cleanup sites. We also have $3.5 million in remedial action grant agreements for seven other sites: Cornwall Avenue Landfill, G-P West, Central Waterfront, Weldcraft Steel and Marine, Harris Avenue Shipyard, I & J Waterway and South State Street MGP.

When Ecology prepared its 2009-11 budget request to the governor, the R.G. Haley site wasn’t in public ownership yet, so it wasn’t eligible for grant funding. We understand this site is a top priority for its new owner, the city, and it’s a top priority for Ecology, so we’re working to obtain future funding there.

Yes, the Legislature transferred $179 million from state and local toxics cleanup accounts into the general fund to manage a historic revenue shortfall in the last two years. But legislators protected projects like Bellingham Bay using state bond funds.

We didn’t lose any money, but we didn’t get any more.

This year, transfers of cleanup account funds and restoration of cleanup funding for new projects are both under consideration. We won’t know how cleanup funds will be used until the final budget is completed.

For now, we have funds to do plenty of work, and we’re doing it.

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