A Toxic Mess: Seattle’s Gas Works Park and the Politics of Environmental Cleanup

Despite knowledge that Seattle’s Gas Works Park is contaminated, political pressure has ensured the park will never become a Superfund site.

  
Gas Works Park, a Seattle public park prominently featured in the 2016 PBS special Ten Parks that Changed America, lies on the north shore of Lake Union, an iconic spot where the city unfolds in a widescreen panorama. The urban core of downtown Seattle lies across a rippling expanse of water to the south, and the profile of the Space Needle anchors the sky view to the west. The graffiti-marked guts of the original gasworks—the scrubbing towers, the storage tanks, and the connecting pipes—give the site an imposing presence, rising high above the chain-link fences that enclose the rusted hulks in a vain attempt to keep the public out.

Seattleites love Gas Works Park. Rain won’t deter them. They perch atop Kite Hill, the park’s highest topographic feature, to watch tugs, pleasure boats, and crew shells stream to and from the Hiram Chittenden Locks. On the Fourth of July, families vie for blanket-sized spots to watch the big fireworks show over Lake Union. At the base of the hill, little kids dodge around a maze of brightly colored pumps that have been restored to preserve the historic nature of the site.

But here’s what most Seattleites don’t know: a toxic swamp lurks beneath. From 1906 to 1956 the gasworks provided a steady supply of energy to the City of Seattle, meaning 50 years of carcinogenic byproducts from coal gasification leaked into the soil. When Gas Works Park was constructed in the 1970s, the park designer incorporated the starkly impressive forms of the industrial hardware into his award-winning design and stacked the leftover refuse piles of contaminated concrete and cast-iron pipe into a “Great Mound.” This new landform was covered with sewage sludge and a layer of sod and christened Kite Hill.

The problem is, when groundwater flows through the contaminated soil and debris, it carries toxic chemicals into Lake Union. Migrating salmon don’t like that. Tribes that rely on fishing their usual and accustomed grounds in Lake Union don’t like it, either. Parents who let their children play at the shoreline shouldn’t, but most don’t pay enough attention to notice. But those of us who worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have waited almost 40 years to see Gas Works Park cleaned up.

Back in 1996, when I was the federal manager in charge of proposing sites to the Superfund National Priorities List, I had the power, authority, and will to list the site. My staff pushed for it. My managers agreed to it. If I’d been successful, Gas Works would be eligible for federal dollars, and, more importantly, EPA could force a schedule for cleanup. But shifting—and undeniably shifty—politics at the national level thwarted me. Even though the park was clearly contaminated, political pressure would ensure that Gas Works Park would never become a Superfund site.

For me, it’s personal. I live near Gas Works Park. While “out of sight, out of mind” is a comforting credo to live by, the converse is true, too. Gas Works lies plunk in the heart of Seattle, never out of sight. When I drive south on the I-5 bridge to downtown, I see it just off to the right. When I visit my local hair salon or pick up new eyeglasses, I see it right down the street. At the fancy restaurant where my husband and I like to celebrate our anniversary, I see it right out the window. In my retirement, I row past Gas Works in a double scull every week. My rowing partner knows that every time we pass Gas Works, she will feel my oars dig into Lake Union with an extra push for spite. Why? Because over the years, here’s what I haven’t seen: cleanup.

Several years into retirement, I started gaslighting myself. Had the park been cleaned up and I just didn’t notice? Had I missed something? I had to find out. I made an appointment to visit my old haunts at EPA to review the Gas Works Park site file and chat with some friends. On a rare sunny day in Seattle, armed with sticky notes and colored pens, I parked myself in the beige tones of the Superfund Record Center, opened my notebook, and adjusted my reading glasses. Six lineal feet of documents dating from 1970 sat on a trolley, awaiting me.

EPA’s entanglement with Gas Works had begun in 1984, eight years after the park opened. A concerned citizen had called our Seattle EPA office to complain about a strong chemical odor and oily sheen at the shoreline of Gas Works Park. Our newly established Superfund section took the call. After the horrific discovery of Love Canal in 1978, Congress had enacted a sweeping federal law to deal with public health and environmental threats from hazardous wastes. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, or, more colloquially, the Superfund law, had given the federal government broad authority to investigate and clean up hazardous waste sites. Our Seattle office had just started staffing up to respond to this new agency imperative.

One of EPA’s first Superfund site managers, a friend of mine, recently recounted his blithe response to the caller. “No problem,” he’d said. “I’ll stop by Gas Works Park this weekend.” But as he traversed the park, he became alarmed at the telltale rainbow sheen at the shoreline and oily puddles on the park surface. How much—and what—was flowing into Lake Union? How dangerous was it? Hastily he deployed EPA’s dive team and scheduled a follow-up onsite sampling investigation.

Divers had no trouble finding black globules of a tarry looking substance resting on the sediment, undulating like amoebas. “Globs were about 20 to 30 feet offshore, about every four to six feet around the perimeter of the park,” a friend from that dive team recently told me. He held up a clenched fist, “Big as this. Multi-lobed. Gooey, so you had to chase those globs around to get a sample.” Subsequent laboratory analysis showed high levels of poly-aromatic hydrocarbons, cancer-causing chemicals that are common at every coal gasification plant around the country. He was emphatic about the mess the globs made: “Decontaminating our scuba gear was a b—” Abruptly he stopped and paused to rephrase: “Uh, took a lot of time.”

For the subsequent onsite sampling, the site manager knew to proceed with caution. His sampling crew needed to collect soil samples at various depths to see if the contaminants the divers found in the sediments could be traced back to the land. But those workers needed protection. Chemical fumes were present. If they drilled into a pocket of toxic goo, would the friction of the drill spark an explosion? How would they protect their skin from exposure? After weighing the risks, he recommended that his sampling crew wear Level-2 protection, the middle choice between a Level-1 “typical walk in the park” site and Level-3 “enclosed, potentially explosive, meth lab” site.

Everyone who works at hazardous waste sites must take OSHA’s standard 40-hour HAZWOPER (Hazardous Waste Response and Emergency Operations Standard) training, which includes classroom lectures on chemical signage and spill prevention, practice opening and closing 55-gallon drums while wearing different levels of protective gear, and learning how to decontaminate yourself and your equipment. When I finished the week-long training in 1990, two unrelated but mind-searing lessons stuck with me: gasoline oval-shaped tank trucks are like tin cans, structurally not as strong as the round or horseshoe-shaped tank trucks used for chemical transport, so when driving down the freeway I give them an extra wide berth; and zipping into a Level-3 full containment suit is like being strangled in a hot closet with Darth Vader panting in your ear. I was hyperventilating into my scuba mouthpiece, barely resisting the futile impulse to rip my rubber suit off with blunted gloved hands. After that experience, I knew that I’d rather spend a week in mind-numbing meetings than five minutes in a Level-3 suit: hence my diversion into management.
 
 

 
 
For their 1984 Level-2 field jaunt, the Gas Works crew wore head-to-toe white Tyvek suits and full-face filter respirators while park goers clad in T-shirts and jeans stood just outside the yellow crime scene tape and gawked. When news photos were released, the mayor was angry. “It’s unnecessarily scary to people to see those moon men walking around in their protective clothing. These are the same people who are in their shorts out there flying kites on Saturday,” he complained to The Seattle Times. Nonetheless, after the public uproar, he had no choice but to close Gas Works Park while the samples were being tested.

How dangerous was Gas Works Park? To meet EPA’s mandate to protect public health and the environment, the site manager requested expert opinions from the Center for Disease Control, our national public health agency, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, our agency-trustee for natural resources. After reviewing the data, the CDC concluded that the site posed the most danger to children who eat soil, also known as pica behavior. A secondary risk came from absorbing chemicals through the skin, which could result in skin cancer or in noncancerous disorders like chronic dermatitis—a skin rash. Because of this, the CDC recommended that people should avoid wading at the shoreline and should stay away from other upland areas when an oily sheen appeared.

NOAA’s opinion was speculative but equally sobering. Endangered salmon species must migrate past Gas Works on their way to the open ocean. The high contaminant levels in the sediment might have already impaired their physical and reproductive health; at those levels, bottom fish have shown evidence of tumors and other abnormalities. Risks from eating the fish also needed to be evaluated. NOAA recommended a thorough investigation of the ecological risks from Gas Works Park.

With a backroom Congressional handshake, Superfund site listings, and ultimately, site cleanups, were kneecapped from 1995 onward.

But after ordering some cosmetic fixes—mowing lawns, fencing off the most contaminated areas, repainting some children’s play structures—the Seattle mayor (to our dismay) reopened the park on August 17, 1984. Although the mayor’s Health Advisory Committee proposed additional sampling, both in the park and in the surrounding Lake Union sediments, no actual cleanup occurred. Political pressure—especially from the park’s famous designer, who touted “bioremediation” as the ultimate cleanser—kept the lid on the CDC and NOAA recommendations.

Between 1984 and 1995, life went on as usual. On rainy days, parents bundled up restless children for a scamper around the park. On warm summer evenings, spectators packed the waterfront railing to cheer on the Duck Dodge, a small sailboat race around Lake Union. On weekends, teens held keggers long into the night. If you asked these parkgoers about the contamination at Gas Works, you’d be met with blank looks.

By 1995, EPA’s Superfund program was running at full speed, tackling hazardous waste cleanups across the country. I’d just been promoted to the Superfund management team. But a crucial deadline was fast approaching. On December 31, 1995, the Superfund excise tax, levied on chemical and petroleum industries to help pay for hazardous waste cleanups, was slated to expire. Would Congress renew it? If not, would the whole program collapse? I surmise that this uncertainty prompted the question: What should we do about contaminated sites that we knew about, but were languishing? Specifically, should we get Gas Works listed and in the cleanup queue before the Superfund excise tax—a major funding source—expired?

After consulting with our tribal partners and getting their support, we rushed to get fresh samples. The additional field work confirmed the earlier findings, and in the fall of 1995, the Gas Works listing package landed in my lap. I applauded my staff at the fast turnaround. As I reviewed the package, I smiled and thought about my five-year-old who refused to go to Gas Works with his pre-school class after I warned him not to wade at the shoreline. But I celebrated a little too soon.

In what has now become a standard but infuriating negotiating tactic (currently at play in October 2023), a budget battle had erupted that autumn that would lead to one of the longest, most disruptive shutdowns of the federal government in our nation’s history. In the dispute over President Clinton’s 1996 budget, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich demanded that Clinton cut the budgets for education, the environment, and public health. Gingrich even raised the ante by threatening to refuse to raise the debt limit, thereby sending the country into default. As the clock ticked toward the September 30 deadline, no one blinked. At the last moment—which often happens—Congress passed a continuing resolution, or a short-term funding bill, to keep the government operating through November 13. We were relieved. Surely the parties would reconcile the budget by then. 

But 1995 was different. On November 14, when major portions of the federal government’s budget appropriations ran out and Congressional hard-liners rejected another continuing resolution, we were shocked but had no choice: I, like thousands of other federal managers, laid off my staff and went home. For five days, about 800,000 federal employees from agencies like Commerce, Justice, Interior, Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development, and EPA were furloughed. No one got paid. Another continuing resolution was followed by another furlough. This second furlough, lasting 21 days, idled an anxious 284,000 of us over the winter holidays. Finally, public ire over the closure of all national parks helped end the impasse. When Congress capitulated and passed Clinton’s budget the first week in January, everyone was elated. Back to business, I thought.

But poring over the text of EPA’s federal funding bill on our first day back to work, one of my staff discovered a clause that would become the bane of our program, a condition that still exists to this day: the so-called “Governor letter.” Without any floor debate, without any signal that it had ever been on anyone’s agenda, without any consultation or even a perfunctory heads-up to EPA Headquarters, Congress had sneaked in a provision to the “must-pass” spending bill that had nothing to do with spending but everything to do with states’ rights. From January 1996 on, the federal site assessment program could no longer put sites onto the Superfund list unless the governor of that state agreed to the listing. The approval had to be in writing. This was my first introduction to “What the hell?” politics.

To be clear, their edict didn’t apply only to Gas Works; it applied—and continues to apply—to every site across the country that will ever be listed. Essentially, it crimped federal enforcement and slammed the brakes on the Superfund program. What governor wants to openly admit to an environmental problem that they need federal heft to solve? What governor wants to publicize “worst of the worst” hazardous sites to the nation? What governor wants to risk a fallout from the real estate industry, and local governments, that fear the “stigma” of a Superfund listing? With a backroom Congressional handshake, site listings, and ultimately, site cleanups, were kneecapped from 1995 onward.

Here’s the shame of it all: protecting public health and the environment should be a mutual goal for all state and federal cleanup agencies. Putting state and federal dollars toward cleanup should benefit all citizens. Yet toxic politics created a mess that even we, the cleanup agencies, were unable to clean up.

So, in July 1996, I bowed to a new political reality. Instead of signing a listing package to propose Gas Works Park to the National Priorities List, I signed a deferment agreement that officially handed off the cleanup to the State of Washington. One small concession: in return for EPA’s formal determination to defer to the state, the state had to report their progress to EPA every five years.

A reasonable question is: What’s the difference between a state-led and a Superfund-led cleanup? Although it’s debatable who can conduct a cleanup “faster, better, cheaper”—a catchphrase touted by some states—one thing that’s not debatable is the unique nation-to-nation relationship that the federal government has with tribes. By recognizing tribal sovereignty and self-governance at the national level, the federal government is bound by a unique trust responsibility which includes formal tribal consultation. For Superfund cleanups, that means that EPA consults with tribes at every critical step, including risk assessment (factoring in tribal practices like higher levels of fish consumption), defining cleanup goals (specifying a safe level that would support those practices), and selecting cleanup options that would attain those safe levels. States do not have formal government-to-government relationships with tribes. Some tribes even refuse to work directly with states and request EPA to negotiate on their behalf.

For the first five-year update, I brought along a good friend who also happened to be a well-known national policy expert on Superfund cleanups. As the gatekeeper for our region’s Superfund Records of Decision—the documents that specify cleanup goals and remedial actions to meet those goals—she’d read every one of our region’s Records of Decision to ensure consistency with national and regional standards. Early on, she’d asked to see our site assessment report, because she, too, had seen the oily sheen on the shoreline when she’d taken her toddler to the park. “Yuck,” she’d said, as she dropped the report back onto my desk, “Not going there again.”

On the drive down to Olympia I asked her opinion about the Gas Works cleanup. What would EPA do? “Oh, that’s easy,” she replied with a flick of her wrist, as if she’d seen it all before. “It’s what we do with every sediment site. Source control, then sediment remediation. For source control, you need to divert clean groundwater flowing down from the neighborhood to make sure it goes around the site, not through it.” She arced her hands above the imaginary site, an umbrella of sorts. “Then a steel sheet-pile wall pounded in at the shoreline, down to the impermeable layer, to prevent more gunk from leaking out into the lake sediment. Cap the uplands with an impermeable layer, and source control is complete. The existing contamination sits in that covered bathtub but doesn’t go anywhere.”

“And the sediment?”

“Well, depending on how contaminated it is, you can either cap it or dredge it. Capping is cheaper, and probably less liable to stir up the sediment and put all those contaminants into the water column.”

At the meeting, we listened carefully to the state’s presentation, which, from what I remember, focused on the administrative aspects of their cleanup process and the reports they planned to generate. I was surprised; after five years, they were still in the early stages of their process. But at the end of the meeting, I did as they asked: I extended their cleanup schedule. More extensions would be needed long after I left the Superfund program.

Here’s a revealing tidbit from the site file that might have contributed to the delay: Right after the deferral agreement was signed, the park designer began lobbying the state to make a “no further action” determination for some areas where he deemed the contamination “inaccessible.” He also proposed a crude fix for the accessible shoreline. Regarding the tar seepage, which he finally acknowledged when shoreline photos proved its existence, he wrote: “Recommend abatement of this summertime annoyance. Install a cubic yard of sand in a closed bunker. Inspect weekly, lightly dust exposed tar with sand. Physically remove tar balls each October. Repeat annually until tar is no longer an annoyance.”

The first real fix took place in 2001, when the state oversaw “capping”—two feet of soil cover over a protective barrier—in the most highly contaminated areas of the park. A groundwater “pump and treat” system was installed and operated from 2001 to 2006. As I perused the site file, I was excited about the active treatment. Had it cleaned up the groundwater? To my dismay, I found that the system was dismantled after the equipment malfunctioned, not because a “safe” cleanup level had been reached. Subsequently the state gave the responsible parties (the City of Seattle and the new incarnation of the gas company) a “covenant not to sue,” essentially a pass, applauding their effort and proclaiming the site clean. Finally, as the park designer had requested, the state deemed that no further action was needed.

There was just one problem: sampling data from 2012 showed that the capping remedy was failing. Pockets of goo still appeared in the park uplands and at the shoreline. The dream of bioremediation remained just that: a dream.

Ten years later, in November 2022, text messages rocketed in from my friends, all referring to the same miracle. “Did you see The Seattle Times today?” one said. “There’s a new cleanup plan for Gas Works Park!”

The good news: the city and gas company had stepped up to pay for the cleanup. Contaminated soils at the shoreline and in the water would be removed and the area capped with clean sand to protect people and animals from dermal contact. There was a win for the environment, too. The accompanying map of Gas Works Park showed a sediment cleanup perimeter that looked expansive enough to protect the offshore biota. I knew that these victories had been hard won and gave the state credit for their persistence.

The bad news: because the permitting and design phases were likely to be controversial, the remediation project wouldn’t begin until “at least 2027.” Dredging would likely occur during the “fish window,” July to September, for two years. Therefore, the earliest date for cleanup would be 2029, 45 years after the contamination was discovered. But at least I’d know when to start looking.

In the meantime, Gas Works Park remains open. And, because it’s open, the public assumes that it’s safe.
 

Amber Wong is a former federal bureaucrat turned creative nonfiction writer for whom the term “continuing resolution” has come to mean much more than the short-term funding measure that Congress uses to avert government shutdown; it now aptly describes the clarity that emerges during her writing process. An engineer by trade, she writes about culture, identity, and her firsthand knowledge of environmental cleanup, although usually not all in the same essay. Recent work can be found in Solstice, CRAFT (2022 Creative Nonfiction Award winner), Fourteen Hills, Under the Gum Tree, Pangyrus, Creative Nonfiction, and other journals and anthologies.

Header photo, Seattleites at Gas Works Park in March 2021, by Seattle Parks and Recreation, courtesy Flickr, CC 2.0.