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Helen Bottcher: We are standing on the shores of Eagle Harbor, and Eagle Harbor is a beautiful,
natural harbor on the east side of Bainbridge Island. Bainbridge Island is an island in
central Puget Sound, it's about a half hour ferry ride west of Seattle. This site was
added to the nations Superfund site list in 1987 because of creosote contamination in
the soil, in the groundwater, and in the sediments on the bottom of Eagle Harbor. Suquamish
Tribe lived here for tens of thousands of years before European contact. We've worked
closely with the tribe for years now. The company that operated here made telephone
poles and railroad ties, and pier pilings. And they did that by treating wood with creosote
and other chemicals to preserve the wood.
Sean Sheldrake: It's a thick, gooey substance that on a hot summer day you might see dripping
down a little bit on a telephone pole. It's very harmful, it can burn your skin. Those
PH's are so concentrated here -- before the cleanup -- that we had to use special protective
gear to make sure we didn't get any of that on our skin. It was staggering how contaminated
the inter-tidal areas were. We found pools of creosote in the water that you could literally
see your own reflection in, and dead crabs, and other marine life everywhere. It was really
dramatic for me as a brand new EPA scientific diver to see that.
Helen Bottcher: So the three main remedies that have been put in place so far are to
pump and treat the groundwater, and to put a seawall around the outside of the site, and that
prevents the groundwater from leaving. And then the third remedy is a cap, a thick layer of clean
sand on the bottom of the seafloor. And that's burying the contamination and protecting
the fish and crabs and other organisms that live out there. And we extended that cap in a
couple of phases and so today there's more than 70 acres of the harbor that are capped.
We rely a lot on our dive team and our ROV team. They're like our eyes and ears on the
ground. They allow us to go out and see the sea floor.
Sean Sheldrake: It's been a great experience working with such a great team here at the
Wyckoff Superfund site. Not only the Project Manager, but also the divers, as well -- since
1985, over 30 years of EPA scientific divers working on this project. New technologies
that we're using underwater here might be human-powered, but they're also you know, machines;
like remotely-operated vehicles [ROV] to take video of the protective cap that's in that
area and figure out what repairs are needed.
Tim Siwiec: The EPA having it's own Dive Team and ROV Team saves the Agency a lot of money.
Here are two lights for better visibility underwater. There's a little grabber arm in
case it needs to attach something or grab something. We have a sonar device here which
allows the EPA to see through low visibility conditions.
Sean Sheldrake: When we dive here now it's a dramatic difference. The near-shore areas
-- there's so much life. We see crabs, we see shellfish, we see moon snails, we see
all sorts of life.
Helen Bottcher: Although a lot of cleanup work has been done to date, some challenges
do remain. We partner with a whole lot of people and agencies. The State of Washington
Department of Ecology has been a close collaborator and partner with EPA. Looking to the future,
we want to get the site cleaned up, so that we can turn all of the site over to the city
for use as a park.
Perry Barnett: The views are amazing. It's a regionally significant setting to have such
an amazing public access to the water. Washington State has most of the tidelands privately
owned, and so access to the water has always scored very, very high whenever we ask the
community what it wants more of.
Charles Schmid: One thing that Pritchard Park provides is a beautiful beach and a lot of
kayakers come here to this beach. We have a rowing team, our high school rowing team
-- which is fantastic and been doing well -- rows in this area.
Helen Bottcher: This cleanup is just one of many actions that EPA is taking to protect
and restore the resources of Puget Sound and I can't overstate the importance of Puget
Sound to this region -- to the people, to the economy. It's essential. We could not
have the life we have here without a healthy Puget Sound.
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