Port Gamble Bay cleanup will begin with a blessing

Published 1:02 pm Thursday, July 16, 2015

PORT GAMBLE — A ceremony will take place 10 a.m. to noon on July 23 at the former mill site to bless Port Gamble Bay. A two-year project to remove creosoted pilings and wood waste from 140 years of mill activity begins this month.

Lloyd Fulton, S’Klallam elder and former mill worker, will open the ceremony with prayer. Welcoming remarks will be made by Fulton, Pope Resources CEO Tom Ringo, and Port Gamble S’Klallam Chairman Jeromy Sullivan. A prayer song will be offered, followed by a blessing of the land and water, and a Shaker prayer by Gene Jones.

Much has been done to improve the health of Port Gamble Bay since the mill closed in the 1990s: Pope Resources’ cleanup to date of the former mill site. The Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe’s removal of debris from its shoreline. The removal of the Point Julia pier. The North Kitsap Forest & Bay project’s acquisition of 1.5 mile of shoreline, now maintained as Port Gamble Heritage Park.

The focus of the cleanup effort that begins this month: Wood waste that is 20 feet deep in places, and some 6,000 creosoted pilings, 4,000 of them under water.

This project will be the largest piling removal project in the Puget Sound region, according to Clay Keown, permit administrator for Ecology.

Port Gamble Bay is one of seven priority bays identified for cleanup under the Puget Sound Initiative. The initiative was established to coordinate efforts to restore and protect the health of Puget Sound by 2020.

Ecology officials say chemicals from pilings and wood waste have created a hostile environment for shellfish and finfish that call the bay home — and for the people who depend on shellfish and finfish as part of their diet and economy. The bay is also prime spawning habitat for Pacific herring, an important forage fish for salmon; Ecology is working to determine if the herring stocks here are distinct, or if they are part of the so-called Quileute stock.

Sediment and shellfish-tissue samples revealed such chemicals as arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, dioxin/furan compounds, PCBs and carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

Getting to this point where the cleanup can start took more than a decade of determining the extent of the cleanup (approximately 78 aquatic and tideline acres); who is responsible (Pope Resources, whose predecessor, Pope & Talbot, operated the mill); and from where the money would come.

The cleanup will cost an estimated $20 million, with the costs borne by Pope Resources. Pope had sought in court to have the costs shared by the state Department of Natural Resources, because it owns the bay floor, aka aquatic lands, but that lawsuit was thrown out.

At a public meeting May 27 at Port Gamble’s Hood Canal Pavilion, Department of Ecology staff members outlined how the project will proceed.

In June, a contractor determined the best methods for removing the pilings, which are of varied age and condition. In July, the piling removal begins. The work will be conducted in two windows: July 2015 to January 2016, and July 2016 to January 2017. Hours: 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday, with periodic nighttime and Sunday work.

By the time the project is completed, 6,000 creosote-coated pilings, overwater structures and 70,000 cubic yards of wood waste and contaminated sediments will have been removed. Wood waste located close to shore will have been dredged and remaining areas contaminated by wood waste capped with clean material. Eelgrass, which provides shelter for Pacific herring and crab, will have been transplanted in the cleaned areas. Water quality will be monitored for 10 years.

Before the May 27 meeting, the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe issued a statement regarding the cleanup:

“The Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe has been involved in bay cleanup planning for years and are very happy to see the cleanup move forward. It is the Tribe’s hope that the cleanup will proceed in a manner that will have minimum adverse impacts to Tribal treaty fish harvesters and consumers.”

In the Treaty of Point No Point in 1855, the S’Klallam reserved the right to fish and harvest resources in their usual and accustomed areas.