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Oil and
water pooled in this freshly dug hole in Edmonds, |
Eight cleaned-up sites have been removed and 18 newly assessed
sites added to Washington state’s hazardous sites list.
Over the past 15 years, some 9,500 toxic sites have been identified. Nearly
60 percent of those sites have been cleaned up or require no further action,
and 31 percent are actively being cleaned up or monitored. Nearly 1,000 toxic
sites are still awaiting action.
“Early on, we made it a priority to deal with sites that posed the highest safety risk to our citizens, and now we’re starting to face sites that are more technologically challenging,” said Jim Pendowski, the lead toxic cleanup manager for Ecology.
Cleanup is required at sites where the amount of toxic substances is above limits set in the state’s Model Toxics Control Act (MTCA), a 1989 citizen initiative that established a broad-based program for cleaning and preventing toxic contamination.
The properties on Ecology’s ranked list of hazardous sites are graded on a scale of one to five, with a rank of one representing the highest level of concern. The scores do not necessarily reflect the severity of the contamination, but are based on a site’s location and the potential paths through which humans and sensitive environments could be exposed to the hazardous substances. Thus, a site with a number one ranking may have less contamination or less-hazardous contaminants than lower-ranked sites, but the risk of exposure is higher and cleanup needs to happen more quickly.
MTCA specifies that those responsible for polluting a site must pay for its cleanup. The state pays for cleanup only when a liable person cannot be found or when identified liable parties lack the financial resources to pay for the work. BFN