KEXP Presents Mind Over Matters; Sustainability Segment: James Rasmussen

this is diane warren your host on the sustainability segment of mind over matters and t x t seattle ninety point three of them and on the web add k e x feat out or at my guest this morning is james rasmussen coordinator for that one issue ever cleanup coalition technical advisory group a nonprofit whose mission is to ensure that won this river clean up that is accepted by and benefits the community and protect fish wildlife and human health james rasmussen is here today to give us an update on efforts to clean up the dim amish superfund site and to tell us about plans to ensure to amish river that works for all welcome james would you begin by describing seattle's do one issue ever and its history we should start with there is a river in seattle and that's an important thing for people to know the dramas river itself is kind of a hidden place if you're driving to west seattle you go over the spokane street bridge you actually pass over the two amish river even though there's no sign there that says you're passing over the traumas river it primarily comes out of the

valley that can't and auburn and rent and then everything else that same valley up where we are and it's still known as the promised rally so the river itself is very old river used to meander through the south and passes through the communities of south park and georgetown and then also the important thing to remember is that if you continue up the two amish river then you go to the green river and then the green river goes all the way to the cascades so it is a continuation of the green river there used to be another river called black river and the confluence of those two started the two amish river used to have between beacon hill in west seattle some of the largest mud flats on the west coast it was a huge area intertidal habitat and what we call the real flows or what comes down out of the mountains of time the mountain erupts was what this place

was an early and seattle's history the city wanted to be the biggest city that it could end in order to do that it needed an industrial area and so they tried some different places and in those times and the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds there were all kinds of big engineering projects used to eliminate hills so that things would be flour so what they did with this inner title habitat as it was all completely filled in harbor island is a place that people might know for years was the largest manmade island in the world that is right at the mouth of the old one which river and now the mouth of the old one which triggers the east waterway west water where we see a lot of cranes and shipping activities and those kind of things but as you go up the de waal marsh is the industrial hub for the city of seattle the boeing company got its

start on the two amish river so it is a place where actually today there are still up to a hundred thousand family wage jobs those are good wage jobs were the industries that are there what part of the issue is designated as a superfund site and how did this come about but in the early nineteen hundreds they changed the river they basically straight and the river out so that it could be used by bigger show it's and so that part of the river the part of her that's been straightened which has the industrial area around it is the place that is now the superfund site but what is this elusive at appalachian unit of amish while we're talking about well over a hundred years of industrial contamination in the river and that also includes out false and storm water and falls in what we call combined sewer

overflows and this is not hard to understand we have a combined sewer system in the city of seattle and when it rains the system sometimes becomes overwhelmed and then what happens is is that these overflows there are but five in the two amish by king county alone basically go off and then sewage is coming out of those overflows and in the two amish it's not just sewage we also have an industrial waste that is coming out of those overflows as well because industries have permits to be able to dump their waste into the sewage system and there's some pre treatment that happens with that at the industry's about the only reason that they get their permit is because then king county or in the wastewater treatment plant west point they know how to treat what's coming into the sewage system so that part of the permitting process but when we have those overflows that goes right into the river

and there's been a lot of different types of dumping and that types of things over the last hundred years and so the contamination is primarily and the settlements of the river what are the most concern there's well over forty thunder over health there are regulations on these contaminants everything from arsenic to the main driver on the river or a pc bees there was something that was created in the late fifties early sixties that actually helps cool things and so there were used in transformers and all types of different things and then later on by the seventies we found out that this was a carcinogenic and a very very bad carcinogenic this is something that can give people cancer and so we found that there is a high level of the cds and many other contaminants that we find in the air

well us to do our nation coalition formed what is your history both cleanup coalition is a coalition of organizations that actually had been working on the river for many years before was designated a superfund site they include the south park neighborhood association the georgetown community council the de wallace tried and also other organizations like the puget sound keeper alliance which had been doing there are patrols on the guam assured before it was designated as a superfund site as well as people from puget sound their programs are still now being run through wu sees so we still have their presence in our coalition and washington toxics coalition and a lot of other groups that work on these kind of issues and they're very important to have those issues so the coalition was formed in two thousand and one and just as the superfund site was designated by the federal government and and so what

we did is in organizations we came together primarily just to make sure that there was one place and one way that the communities and other organizations could get information and get out information and so that was the main reason that we reform very soon after we became a community advisory group which is something epa likes to do on super fund sites rather than having fourteen or fifteen different places where they have to go than they know that they've got one place we also hold the technical assistance grant and what that is is it gives us some funding to be able to bring in technical advisors for the community itself so it's not a technical advisor from epa and it's not a technical advisor from the responsible parties it's their only technical advisor and that way they have their own person to go to for

answers and conduct a band we've been working with peter defer who's one of the foremost experts and actually advises epa on lots of different things that he's really excellent i'm diane hein and my guest is james rasmussen coordinator for that one issue or a cleanup coalition technical advisory group a nonprofit whose mission is to ensure the one issue for cleanup that it's accepted by and benefits the community and protect fish wildlife and human health and you are attuned to the sustainability segment of mind over matter some listener park at a speed ninety point for espn and on the web at atx we know it the epa finalized their plan for cleaning up to do amish last november what is the epa plan for the cleanup well the process is a very long process and there's a lot of people that i've heard talk about this and see what is actually going to get done when are we actually going to get to work this is a circle process assistant federal government through epa and it's in a remedial investigation

where is the contamination what kind of contamination is it and everything even though you know a lot of information you start over at the beginning and the feasibility study which is how many different ways can this be cleaned up and then we get to a proposed plan which is kind of a strong horse the epa points out and then collects a lot of comments and with our organization we pushed that envelope a lot and head well over two thousand individual different comments from people actually they're well over four thousand comments some of them were similar so they put them together and epa actually asked to respond to all of those and i'd like to make sure people understand especially with this kind of a process epa is an organization that actually listens to people and they actually understand that when they have more public input they actually have a better plan now there's a kind of proportion of how much was being dredged which is actually

taking the contaminants out of the river which is kept how much is enhanced natural recovery or adding like charcoal just like you put into your filter in your water that that goes into the sediment that's going to be tapping some of the places this is a complicated site because some of the sites that are really actions sites already been worked on and they're almost all gone out actually seven sites and one of the last ones to kind of get worked on right now is the boring side and boeing has one of the largest contamination sights on the river and up to thirty feet of contamination in the settlements of the river on the boring side so the process goes from that proposed plan and then as you said in november they came out with a record of decision that is epa's final decision the community asked for more directing there is more dredging in the plan there's a lot of different things that changed with that

because there are a lot of things that epa really started to look at and so the community feels good because the community pushed for certain things those things came about but the communities not been pushing and other words one of the things that we want to see is to work with the responsible parties to work with the epa and to work with ecology where we have the opportunity to do more let's do more because it only helps us in the long run there are a lot of people out there that say well that water is just so dirty and when such an urban environment that were never going to be able to get berkeley one of the things that we found is that there's been an awful lot of work up in the watershed in places like auburn and can't and the water that comes down the green is getting cleaner and cleaner all the time that means that we actually have a chance if we can stop some of the lateral sources of control that

one shrimper and that is basically storm water right now and that's an interesting flop because thirty years ago it was the industries that were the ones that were polluting and the rest of us were contributing a little bit and now it's completely the other way around is the storm water that is the threat and it is the industries that are actually cleaning up their act not everybody's perfect yeah you know those things are going to change over the years but there is an opportunity to get there and to really bring this home seattle showed leadership in creating this industrial or this is what the wealth of seattle was built on the back of that oneness river today we have to show that leadership that we can still have the industry's the communities that are there and the wildlife and all can fly from the same place now there are some people that

will say well that just can't happen somebody has to be able to do that if we are to save puget sound if we are to save other places that are like the city of seattle somebody has to find the answer and i truly believe that we have an opportunity here one of the goals of the epa do amish cleanup plan in terms of how much of the pollution will actually be the reason the epa does cleanups is for human health and the interaction with human health on the two amish river these people that fish they're now there's also issues with people who kayak dot org boat on the river or worked korean the river and around the river but it's mainly people's health that epa is concerned with that's the whole reason that they do these cleanups and so it's to make the river and the cleanup as health protective as possible right now the way the plan sets we don't get that

there will still be signs on the river that says don't fish here dogfish for the native fish that are there the crabs the clams but because those signs are they're one of the things that we found is that we have a large immigrant population and king county and that's where they go to fish because they're not bothered by fish and wildlife agents there and so what happens is that this becomes a place where lower income people fish and immigrants fish and one of the things also that we found is that if you go and stop them from fishing then it's a health benefit in one way on the other side that's culturally important for these people to fish that's why they do it and so if you take that away from them there's a healthy deficit for doing that so we have to be very cognizant as we go down the road that people

are still going to be fishing in the river and no matter what we'd do you not going to stop everybody from doing that and the epa said they would actually take away ninety percent of the pollution that was originally aired you think thats adequate well if you've ever been done just even painting in your house or anything like that and a four painting contractor tells you that well ok will get ninety percent of the stuff that's usually not quite good enough but there are a lot of people especially on the responsible parties that's a week and get this claim and that should be all we have to do the community is saying an epa actually is saying well you have to go through all the motions and after you've gone through everything and we accept that you've gone through everything there's a point there that says well you've done what you can and then there's an opportunity for waivers on a site like this but what the community wants to see and what epa and the department of ecology

here in the state is that those things have to be done every opportunity house to be taken to be able to get the rivers clean as possible you are ten to the sustainability segment of mind over matter is on k x p seattle ninety point three of them and on the web add k x p dowd orgy i'm diane horn and my guest is james rasmussen coordinator for that of amish river queen of coalition technical advisory group a nonprofit whose mission is to ensure to amish river clean up that has accepted by in benefits the community and joe tex fish wildlife and human health to what extent was environmental justice incorporated into the epa to amish cleanup plan for the first time in the proposed plan there was actually a whole segment on environmental justice is the first time the epa has ever done that the situation on the two amish river is an obvious environmental justice situation both georgetown and south park

low income high minority those are what epa itself calls environmental justice communities easy way to describe this is taking the opposite tack which environmental injustice which is that low income people and people of color are much more affected by contaminants in their environment then other portions of the population and so in this case we've seen that we've done health studies in the area which unfortunately nobody else wanted to do for generations in south park in georgetown and what we have found is that there's a huge deficit in that area a lot of people look at the city of seattle has this wonderful place you know where everybody gets along its green and were right on the cutting edge of doing everything the reality is especially down here that it's it's our blind spot is a place that we haven't really gotten an

opportunity to look at those things your life expectancy from south park is seven years less than any other place in king county including low income areas that are very close to the seven years more when you take an area like maybe i'm a drone or ravenna or a high income place reserved for taking year deficit that is huge and that's something that actually the city immediately took notice and created what they called launch river opportunity fund which they put two hundred and fifty thousand dollars into the community last year they're going to be putting at least that amount into the community next year king county is starting to look at how they might be able to fund things it's almost like the city and the county are starting to understand that all we haven't really pay attention to these communities and lots of them portland aspect of this is not just the

cleanup of the river it is the discovery of communities that have been suffering for a long time and this case were also talking about not just the contamination the river but air pollution food deserts as we call them there's no grocery stores and self park is no real grocery stores and georgetown i have to be careful there's a wonderful small little grocery store the carlton greer shoe store and it's a wonderful place and the people are very good but there's no what we would think of as a large hershey store where people get healthy for a timeline for cleanup going forward well was december that the record decision was released and for the next year it is epa working to get agreements with responsible parties and one of the things that everybody needs to understand people have our listeners why does this matter to me and the first responsible parties to come for is the city of

seattle because they have out falls on the dramas river king county because they have a combined sewer overflows and other articles that are on the river the port of seattle which is the largest property owner on the dramas river and the boeing company and they came together and call themselves the lord wash waterway grow and we pay taxes to three of those four entities and so it's probably going to be our tax dollars that are going to be cleaning this up so everybody has an opportunity to be part of the sport this next year they're going to be working on agreements with up to a hundred other industries that are responsible historically after that then there's another process of really designing the cleanup itself and that takes at least five years from what i understand and while that is going on the department of ecology is working on controlling sources of contamination to the two amish river which not only includes what we call lateral sources and the

sources that go directly into the two amish river from the banks of the river but also all the way up to green river so that's a pollutant loading that's coming down the river and so they're working on all of those things to be able to get them controlled as much as possible and that's you at least a year and then another five years to plan and after that the full cleanup on the river starts they said we've already done early actions on the site and the estimate is is that we've already taken over half the contamination of the river with those early action set so it's not like nothing has been done but we're really talking about now is that final cleanup which the community is going to be very involved with because it will affect the community very much as they go through and do those clans what are the goals of that amish clean air coalition going for it we want to empower the community through this process especially the communities of south park and georgetown that themselves and

rightfully so have felt ignored by the city and by the county many many different either illegal settlements or other things have happened on that want trigger because of the pollution and they've never followed through and that's kind of the reason we're in the situation that we are today with having a superfund site is because they've never falter on the things that they needed to do with the river so the goal is to not just have a process happen to these communities but to empower them through this process to make sure that they understand that their voice is being heard and that is making a difference plus we look at all kinds of impacts where the first real vision and processes we did with community was to look at what you want this place to look like after the river is cleaned up and all kinds of different things start coming out of the community really

good ideas about there's a lack of parks in both georgetown south park there's a lack of access to the river and obviously in some places this is a river that you really didn't want to have access to them after its cleaned up this will be a better place to come to and i think one of the other things that becomes a real concern with the community swells the river gets cleaned up and maybe we have more parks maybe we've planted more trees in the neighborhood maybe the neighborhood is even improve more as i mean we're gonna be priced out of those and gentrification is going to take over gentrification is happening right now in these neighborhoods and one of the things that we want to look at is how to educate the community how to work with the city and the county to be able to make sure the flavor of this neighborhood's days what it is and that people aren't forced to move i mean obviously things changing neighborhood always have always will but in this case

it shouldn't be because they have bore the burden of the contamination and now the contamination is less that now they're the ones that have to leave and so those are the type of things that we see and again empowering people through the process is what we see is our real goal and there's so much knowledge and that community about itself its own history where they want to see themselves and how they want to get there well what's the message you'd like to leave our listeners with well let's kind of be blunt it's important that your government not just represent affluent neighborhoods but also represents the western neighbor out i think we've seen a change with the least king county and the city of seattle they realize that there's been a deficit here

and they're trying to work to make that change now one of the things it's a concern for us is don't come in and make that change because you want to see this happen but as the community make sure that the community has a voice in the church and so that's i think the important point that i wanna make sure everybody understands is that as the least diverse ryan is not represented that means that the most of us aren't represented either and it's not up to the government to pick and choose to look on it on a larger level this country the united states has been looked at and buy ourselves as a grand experiment we are trying to perfect hard democratic way isn't everything else in this process that we're going through is perfecting that it is sometimes sloppy is

sometimes confrontational even but i think that as we go through this and we understand more we come out the other end a better place a better city a better community a better industrial area hopefully a cleaner puget sound because the pollutants are coming into puget sound anymore from that along that river and a more just society that's really what we look for what the summer shooting against no problem thank you you were just listening to james rasmussen coordinator for the de la mission for cleanup coalition technical advisory group for more information took on the web at a wire mesh cleanup dido orgy i'm diane warren thanks for listening and be sure to tune in to the sustainability segment again next week i frankly have an uncanny x e natural it