BELLINGHAM, WA (MyBellinghamNow.com) – Bellingham Bay has been a site of industry in the last century, and efforts to clean toxins released as a byproduct of that industry is heavily underway. From landfill sites to former mills, the bay has seen toxic chemicals such as mercury and petroleum leaching into the sediment, groundwater and surrounding ocean for a long time.

The last few decades have seen major strides in making the bay a clean and healthy place for local residents and wildlife, in addition to allowing the City of Bellingham to reclaim the waterfront for both industry and pleasure.

Efforts to clean up the bay became a consolidated effort in 2000, when the Bellingham Bay Comprehensive Strategy was drawn up. The plan pulls in multiple agencies to clean up 12 sites in the bay under the Model Toxics Control Act (MTCA), Washington state’s environmental clean-up law. 

So far, roughly 14,000 sites have been identified to be cleaned up under the act that passed into law in 1989. According to the Washington State Department of Ecology, over 7,700 of those sites have been cleaned up to a point that no further action is required.  

As for Bellingham, only four of the 12 sites grouped under the strategy are at the final stage of the eight-stage cleanup process. But that doesn’t mean the other sites are not far along in the process to remove toxic chemicals. 

Ships moor at the recently constructed concrete dock at the Harris Avenue Shipyard. The dock replaces a wooden one that was dropping chemically treated wood into the water. Now, storm water drains into filtration systems under grates in the dock. Photo by Emma Toscani

A large portion of Ecology’s work to clean up a site is in the preparation, factoring in stakeholders and evaluating what needs to be cleaned up and how it needs to be disposed. The majority of Bellingham’s sites are in the “continue designing the cleanup” phase, which is over halfway through the process. 

“Most of these sites are in the design phase, and that’s actually really exciting for us,” Julia Schwarz, hydrogeologist with Ecology’s toxics cleanups program, said. “We’re to the point where in the next few years, we’re going to be able to see a lot of these cleanups being constructed.” 

Schwarz oversees a lot of cleanups in Bellingham Bay and wants people to know that project delays happen, but that doesn’t stop the teams from working and finishing the project. 

One of Ecology’s hydrogeologists Julia Schwarz talks to a crowd at a Harris Avenue Shipyard walking tour on Wednesday, Feb. 26. Photo by Emma Toscani

Funding these costly projects comes from a few sources. In late January, Ecology signed for an $11 million grant that goes towards the R.G. Haley site near Glass Beach. Ecology’s Communications Manager for the Northwest Region Scarlet Tang said that the grant will cover only about half of the funding needed to clean up the R.G. Haley site. 

Port of Bellingham spokesperson Mike Hogan said a major change in how cleanups happened was in how the projects are funded. MCTA law allocates state money for these projects, and Ecology will match a local municipality up to 50% through grants.

One of the reasons these projects take so long is holdups at the state funding level. MTCA money isn’t always used for cleanups, and according to Hogan, local legislators are regularly going to bat to make sure the legislative district gets funding for its cleanups.

“The remedial action grants [are] the main delay,” Hogan said. “There is a great need for those grants.”

Washington state Senator Sharon Shewmake thinks that Bellingham has been good at securing the funds compared to other municipalities in the state.

“This work is generational,” Sen. Shewmake said. “I just think that people don’t understand that enough about government: that we look at the things that are out there, and we look at the wonderful things in our community and we don’t think about the people that came before us, [such as] not knowing if they’d ever see the impact.”

 

A crowd gathers to hear from RE Sources, Port of Bellingham and Ecology representatives during a walking tour at the Fairhaven Shipyard, formerly the Harris Avenue Shipyard site on Wednesday, Feb. 26. This was a larger than average turnout compared to previous walking tours in Bellingham according to Ecology’s Scarlet Tang. Photo by Emma Toscani

The R.G. Haley Site is nearing the construction phase, and Ecology in partnership with the City of Bellingham will seek to find someone to do the construction later this year. When construction is complete—in about three years or so—a new park will have sprung up where R.G. Haley and the Cornwall Landfill sites currently sit. 

Salish Landing Park is planned primarily for the site of the former landfill and R.G Haley. In August 2024, the Port of Bellingham relinquished control for their property involved in the cleanup to the City of Bellingham. Bidding on who will start the construction will open in April of this year, with construction beginning soon after.

“We’re a community that likes to recreate, and I think people want to have access to the water and be able to look at the water and all of those pieces,” Sen. Shewmake said.

Both her and state Representative Alicia Rule noted the economic impacts that cleaning the bay will have.

“We have a dire need to be able to get back to our roots and do the commercial fishing that’s so important to me, as well as look for every new opportunity,” Rep. Rule said. She mentioned kelp farming as a possibility.

“I don’t want to miss out on that money,” Rep. Rule added. “I’m going to go after it because we can do good things, and people can make a living, and it can be really beneficial for many things at the same time.”

A map of a few of the cleanup sites in Bellingham Bay. Courtesy of WA Dept. of Ecology.

As for what is being cleaned up in the bay, each site has a different set of toxics left behind by past activities there.

“We get petroleum at almost every site we investigate,” Ecology toxicologist Priscilla Tomlinson said. “Mercury is kind of unique to Bellingham Bay. We do find it at sites around the state, but it’s not found as frequently, but because of the pulp mill operation, that is a problem in Bellingham Bay.”

The reason for the mercury has to do with the Georgia-Pacific pulp and paper mill, whose cleanup has begun, nearing the end of Ecology’s lengthy process to clean up a site.

“As we get to construction, the health of the bay is really going to improve,” Shwarz said. “And, you know, obviously, we have long term monitoring plans so we can make sure that after the cleanup is done, that we’re still protecting human health and the environment in the long term.”

Toxins in the bay and surrounding area also stem from normal human activities like construction and roadways. This factors into how Ecology approaches evaluating what materials at certain levels are going to be harmful to humans and other animals.

“When we’re setting cleanup levels, we’re focusing on what we call chronic exposure. That means repeated exposures, day after day for a large part of the lifetime,” Tomlinson said. “So quite a few of the chemicals that I listed are persistent in the environment, so they stick around for a long time, and quite a few of them also bioaccumulate in the body when you’re exposed over a long period of time.”

Tomlinson also notes the presence of PCBs, a family of toxic chemicals found in a variety of items from concrete to paint and caulking material.

Port of Bellingham’s Director of Environmental and Planning Services Brian Gouran explains to a crowd during the Harris Avenue Shipyard walking tour that the work is going to be underway in the cleanup at that site following a comment period currently ongoing. Photo by Emma Toscani

“There’s a concerted effort to revitalize maritime heritage, maritime occupations and build a workforce around that,” Rep. Rule said. “If we don’t clean up to make that possible, then we’re going to miss out on the opportunity.”

“You know, you go and you read historical books [and] there’s so many salmon that you can almost walk across them. And I think that’s cool. I think that’s part of our heritage. It’s part of our duty to the tribes,” Sen. Shewmake said.

Overall, restoration will take time, but the work is happening now to create a healthier Bellingham Bay.