Port Receives Phoenix Award for Environmental, Economic Improvements at Terminal 18

The Port of Seattle's Terminal 18 redevelopment and cleanup project will be honored next week when the Port receives a Phoenix Award at the Brownfields 2004 National Conference in St. Louis, Missouri.

"It's a great honor to be recognized at a national level for this project," said Port of Seattle Commission President Paige Miller. "We worked hard to make sure the T-18 expansion project was a sound investment in our environment and our economy. Environmental stewardship is one of our key objectives as an institution."

Since 1997 the Phoenix Awards have recognized outstanding achievement in brownfields redevelopment projects across the United States. The awards encourage innovative, practical solutions that bring polluted, underutilized industrial sites back into productive use.

Terminal 18 is located on Harbor Island in Seattle's Elliott Bay. The 480-acre island was created in the early 1900s to provide the growing city with level industrial land and facilities to handle maritime cargoes. By 1983 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had listed Harbor Island as a Superfund site. Soil contaminants on both public and private lands included lead, mercury, arsenic, petroleum products and PCBs.

In 1991 the Port of Seattle began buying industrial properties on Harbor Island in order to expand Terminal 18, which lies on the east side of the island. But before the expansion could take place, the Port was required to clean up the contaminated properties. Under an agreement with the EPA the Port excavated and treated the most contaminated soils, paved much of the site to minimize dispersion of pollutants, demolished a lead smelter and metal processing facility, removed paint and dust that contained lead, and instituted ongoing groundwater monitoring.

The redevelopment project also created a 1.1-acre public park with 380 feet of shoreline access, walking paths and picnic shelters. Other upgrades on Harbor Island included road improvements, new sidewalks, a bike path and a pedestrian overpass.

The cleanup allowed the Port to move ahead with a $300-mllion, 90-acre expansion of Terminal 18 that nearly doubled its size and added a new dockside intermodal rail yard, two new truck gates, a larger container storage yard and other amenities to improve cargo handling capabilities.

"The Terminal 18 project is an example of a win for both the regional economy and the environment," said Port of Seattle CEO M. R. Dinsmore. "It is a prime example of what agencies like public port authorities can achieve when they have the support of their communities and the customers."
The Phoenix Awards projects are evaluated by a team of seven judges that include officials from EPA, academia, the federal department of Housing and Urban Development, the U.S. Economic Development Administration, state brownfields agencies and the private sector.