Story and photos by Jason Grotelueschen
Reporting for West Seattle Blog

Ongoing efforts to clean up contamination in and along the Duwamish River took center stage Tuesday night at a community open house featuring several groups and agencies involved with the various multi-year projects.

The event, which we previewed here, was held at South Seattle College (WSB sponsor) on the Georgetown campus, and featured representatives from the Washington Department of Ecology (including Tamara Cardona-Marek, pictured above welcoming attendees), the Environmental Protection Agency and the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition.

The open house focused on six Lower Duwamish cleanup sites (pictured on the map below), three of which are now in the “open comment” period for public input (one of those periods ends Friday noon):

Each of the six projects had a representative onsite to answer questions about the site cleanup, how the process works and how to get involved.

Sandra Matthews (at right) from Ecology represented the Snopac Property cleanup (info here), which is open for public comment until July 9 (comment link here):

Dean Yasuda from Ecology is site manager for the General Electric Aviation project (info here), which he said will have a comment period in August or September as part of a “check-in process” that happens every five years.

Dave Bartus from the EPA is a project coordinator for Boeing Plant 2 project (info here), open until August 1 for public comments (which can be emailed to him at bartus.dave@epa.gov).

Erin Hobbs (at right) from Ecology was there to talk about 8801 E Marginal Way (info here) which is expected to be open for public comment in August.

Byung Maeng (at middle-right) from Ecology represented the Boeing Developmental Center project (info here), which is open for public comments until this Friday Jun 21 at 11:59am (comment link here).

Jing Liu (at left) from Ecology talked to attendees about the Emerald Gateway site (info here), which she said is up for public comment in August or September.

Other booths featured information about overall sediment cleanup (led by the EPA), “source control” (the process of preventing contamination from entering the waterway in the first place, led by Ecology), and the work led by Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition (including former director James Rasmussen and current director Paulina Lopez, both seated below).

An overview of the key cleanup projects on the Lower Duwamish is here on Ecology’s website.