Fall 2004
Digging Up HistorY
by Matt Burdick
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This map shows where Whatcom Creek meets the Holly Street Landfill site. |
It’s a typical October day in Maritime Heritage Park. Whatcom Creek fishermen focus on the day’s catch. College students play Frisbee, facing the city of Bellingham with their backs to the bay. Elementary students learn about art, salmon runs and nature at the park’s environmental education center. Every day the park sees visitors of all ages, from all walks of life. But few park-goers realize one of their favorite recreation spots rests on 20 feet of solid waste.
Maritime Heritage Park is located on the southeastern corner of the former Holly Street Landfill. The landfill oncewas an estuary of Whatcom Creek.
According to the Department of Ecology, the city of Bellingham dumped solid waste in the landfill between 1937 and 1953. Copper and zinc are leaching from the landfill into the creek at levels that exceed Ecology standards. The city and Ecology have scheduled a major restoration project to be completed early 2005.
Heather Higgins, who teaches at the park’s environmental education
center, walks to where the creek broadens into an estuary. The waterfall behind her drowns out her voice as she points to the location where Henry Roeder, one of the area’s first European settlers, built his lumber mill. No other bay in Puget Sound had a waterfall flowing into it that could power a mill, Higgins said
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Jeff Jewell, photo historian for the Whatcom Museum of History & Art, sights in the imaginary line that separated the towns of Whatcom and Sehome. |
When Roeder arrived, Bellingham Bay was dramatically different than it is today. Bellingham’s shoreline, for example, used to fall immediately below the Whatcom Museum of History & Art in Maritime Heritage Park. Dredge and fill have since transformed what was once mudflats into developed land.
Bellingham was rich in resources in 1853 when settlers arrived. People came in search of salmon, coal and timber. The first inhabitants established the town of Whatcom, which is part of present-day Bellingham. Whatcom joined with the town of Sehome in 1890.
As the area developed, the majority of business activity moved east. The upper class moved from the Holly Street area, and marginalized groups of people, often minorities, moved in. The area became a “red-light district” of sorts, said Jeff Jewell, photo historian for the Whatcom Museum. Whatcom, now Old Town, became the city’s dumping ground.
Higgins said the prevailing attitude used to be, “If it’s downstream, it’s gone.”
Nothing is farther downstream than an estuary, so the area became a trash-
collection point. Raw sewage and waste traveled from homes and businesses into the area near the estuary. Old Town buildings were constructed on pilings because the area was not yet completely filled. This left open areas and water beneath buildings where human waste and trash accumulated. This accumulation continued, leading to the area officially becoming a landfill in 1937, according to Ecology documents.
“We could fill this with garbage; it’s Old Town,” said Jewell, speculating on the common thinking of the time.
The city continued dumping in the Whatcom Creek estuary until 1953. The filling converted most of the original estuary to uplands.
Today, the landfill consists of different layers, Higgins said. Municipal waste — metal, glass and other trash — is combined with sawdust, wood debris and sediment dredged from Bellingham Bay.
“We call it a garbage sandwich,” Higgins said.
The layers provide a rough timeline of the area’s use. The sawdust is a remnant of the lumber mills that used to be near the estuary. Different layers of trash reveal previous industry. The dredging debris indicates the conversion of Bellingham Bay’s mudflats into uplands.
In recent years, the Holly Street Landfill area has seen little new development because of the confusion about the level of contamination, said Sheila Hardy, a Bellingham Planning and Community Development special projects manager. Potential developers and investors never fully understood the developmental constraints the landfill placed on them.
“People used to ask, ‘Is this a glow-in-the-dark type of contamination?’ ” Hardy said.
One-third of an acre of the landfill along the creek is not properly capped. Ecology project manager Lucy McInerney said the acute-seepage standard for copper is 4.8 micrograms per liter, and for zinc it is 90 micrograms per liter. McInerney said two seep locations on the north bank yielded copper concentrations of 14 micrograms per liter and 47 micrograms per liter and zinc concentrations of 268 micrograms per liter and 316 micrograms per liter. The department requires a cap of clean soil to limit further contamination.
The cleanup will include more than what Ecology requires. Ecology and the city of Bellingham plan to cap the exposed parts of the landfill, expand the estuary and construct a public-access boardwalk. The city expects the project, including the restoration and the boardwalk, to cost approximately $1.35 million. Ecology will fund half of the environmental remediation, and the city’s solid-waste fund will pay for the rest. A state capital grant from the Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development will contribute $50,000 toward the boardwalk’s construction.
According to the city, construction company Ebenal General will remove
approximately 25.5 million pounds of waste from the site. Removing the material will increase the size of the estuary. Contaminated soil comprises the majority of debris. Envirogreen Technologies Ltd., a waste-management company, will dispose of the contaminated soil in British Columbia. Despite efforts to enlarge natural habitat, the project will not restore the estuary to its original size. Some of the former estuary is now the home of businesses, such as the RE Store and Parberry’s Northwest Recycling. The largest factor that limits site restoration is the cost of contaminant disposal.
“It is very difficult to expand the habitat,” Hardy said. “Disposal of the waste material is one of the largest costs.”
Most of the 13-acre area is not dangerous to humans or wildlife because the majority of the landfill is contained; for this reason, a larger restoration is not planned.
Hardy said a number of factors determine the project’s success. The area must become a productive habitat. Copper and zinc levels must meet Ecology standards. The site also must stimulate private investment and see increased public use.
The cleanup of the Holly Street Landfill repre-sents a turning point in Bellingham’s attitude toward Whatcom Creek. This winter will mark the completion of the project, changing the dynamics of Old Town once again. The Whatcom Creek estuary was the birthplace of Bellingham. Later it became a landfill. Now the city will revive it through the upcoming restoration