(WSB photo)

Forest-restoration work parties are typically in or near the woods. Not this one on Saturday. Volunteers came to a wide-open site on the South Seattle College Georgetown campus – one with a memorable history – to plant the future Georgetown Community Forest.

SSC (a WSB sponsor) is partnering with the non-profit SUGi Urban Forestry Project, the Duwamish Tribe, the Duwamish River Community Coalition, and volunteers from the college and community to transform what was once the Hat ‘n’ Boots gas station (see and read about it here) into the Georgetown Community Forest. The college explains that this is meant “to heal the land and the people living on it” – by improving air quality and soil health, as well as giving people “a calm space where they can immerse themselves in nature.” On Saturday, Ken Workman of the Duwamish Tribe planted the first of more than 1,300 plants installed by about 150 volunteers:

(SSC photo)

Among others who spoke at the ceremony launching the planting event were SSC’s acting president Sayumi Irey and Georgetown campus executive dean Laura Kingston:

(WSB photo)

40 different species of trees, shrubs, and groundcover – all native to this area – comprised the 1,300+ plants, planned with the Miyawaki Method, which focuses on what would grow back in the area if humans left it alone.

(SSC photo)

Other community volunteering events will be held there to help care for the site as it begins its return to foresthood. Read more about the plan here.

(WSB photos and video)

With another “atmospheric river” on the way, the King County Wastewater Treatment Division‘s Georgetown Wet Weather Treatment Station is gearing up for another potentially busy run of intercepting contaminated runoff/overflow water before it gets to the Duwamish River. This is the year-old facility you may have driven or rode past many times, near the north end of the 1st Avenue South Bridge, on the northwest corner of 4th and Michigan. Today the county gave media crews a behind-the-scenes tour.

Operating the quarter-billion-dollar facility – built over more than four years – is not labor-intensive – just one person is needed at all times to run it, and if there’s a major storm event sending millions of gallons of water through it, that rises to a grand total of three. It can handle up to 70 million gallons of combined-sewer overflow per day. (So far its peak usage has been 26 million gallons a day during an early December storm.)

Unlike the county’s Murray Wet Weather Facility by Lowman Beach, and the West Duwamish Wet Weather Storage Facility that’ll be built on our side of the 1st Avenue South Bridge, the Georgetown facility is a treatment plant – taking solids out of the water via a “high-speed settling tank” using materials like the sand in these bags to quickly pull the solids out of the water:

The solids eventually wind up in agricultural use. The filtered water gets disinfected with ultraviolet light:

After all that, the treated water gets sent into the Duwamish River, via an outfall under the nearby bridge.

King County Executive Dow Constantine gave the overview of the plant, noting it’s won awards and is intended for climate resiliency, including the fact it was built to handle up to two feet of sea-level rise:

(added) Rebecca Singer, who oversees facilities including this one, said this rainy season is the real test for the treatment station:

The facility also has interpretive features and gets visits from students.

The county has been working on combined-sewer-overflow reduction for more than a decade under orders from the federal government to reduce the overflows into local waterways. The consent decree related to this gave a deadline of 2030 to meet the goals; we asked Wastewater Treatment Division spokesperson Alison Hawkes how much progress the county has made: “We built the Georgetown Wet Weather Treatment Station as one of our commitments in the consent decree. We have controlled a number of outfalls already, and are working to meet requirements on others. Some of the details on this future work, such as the timeline, are in negotiations with EPA and [state] Ecology as part of our request for modification of the consent decree – that information will be released to the public once negotiations are finalized.”

(King County video)
Four and a half years after construction began by the north end of the 1st Avenue South Bridge, the Georgetown Wet Weather Treatment Station is ready to be put into operation. Next big rainstorm, the King County Wastewater Treatment Division says, the quarter-billion-dollar facility [map] will start treating stormwater that otherwise would overflow, untreated, directly into the Duwamish River. Though it’s ready to do that job, the facility does have a little more work ahead, according to today’s announcement: “King County will install art features early next year. One will light up the facility as water moves through the treatment process. Another will recreate rain events inside a 35-foot-high clear cylinder.” Meantime, as we’ve been reporting, KCWTD has another facility in the works to protect the Duwamish River – a 1.25-million-gallon overflow storage tank in southeast West Seattle, near the south end of the 1st Avenue South Bridge. The West Duwamish Wet Weather Storage Facility is being designed right now and expected to start construction in 2025.