The city of Seattle, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and some of the biggest polluters of the Duwamish River came under fire last November after presenting a disappointing river cleanup plan, according to an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Seniors within the Community, Environment and Planning (CEP) major at the UW are working with community groups to find solutions to the cleanup problem.

“Getting engaged in a project like the Duwamish River, which will have profound impacts in the years to come — that community engagement is the center of our major,” said James Ypma, a CEP major involved in the cleanup project.

The Duwamish River has suffered from decades of industrialization, including the manufacture of 17 fighter planes per day by Boeing during World War II. The lower Duwamish River was named a hazardous superfund site by the EPA in 2001.

One cleanup site reviewed by the EPA and originally inhabited by Malarkey Asphalt Company had 55-gallon drums full of oil contaminated with PCBs leaking into the soil and water.

PCBs, a mix of chemicals now banned in the United States, are reproductive toxins associated with immunological and neurological changes in children and cause cancer in rats.

“We were able to get the Port of Seattle, which owns the property now, to move one drum,” said B.J. Cummings, an organizer for the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition (DRCC), a group working with the CEP students.

Five hundred sites on the EPA’s National Priorities List are contaminated with PCBs, including the Duwamish River.

EPA workers tested the soil per the request of the DRCC and found that contamination was worse as they moved inland toward the residential areas. The EPA then proposed a cleanup that did not meet community expectations.

“The neighborhood went up in arms, because it wasn’t even the industrial standard,” Cummings said.

The proposal requested that the toxicity be lowered to 25 parts per million (ppm) of PCBs. The regulated standard for industries is 10 ppm, while the standard for residential areas is 1 ppm.

The Port of Seattle overturned the EPA’s proposal. A new cleanup plan is being drafted and will be presented to the community this fall.

CEP majors and DRCC leaders are striving to represent several different groups of people in their research on what residents want the river to look like 20 years from now. Interviews from subsistence fishermen, residents and the homeless are being taken into account.

Ypma is looking at what industries around the river want.

“We need to become literate in zoning and learn enough so that we can teach it in a public form,” he said.

As exhibited by the Malarkey Asphalt site, different types of zoning allow for different levels of toxic pollutants in the environment within the zone.

“We want to make sure that the final vision is the community’s vision,” said Maggie Milcarek, a social work student helping the project reach out to lower-income and homeless populations around the river.

The majority of the populations around the river are minority groups, including Spanish-speaking communities.

“We’re trying to reach people who won’t necessarily go to meetings,” said Joyce Tseng, a programs manager with the International District Housing Alliance. She is working with Cambodian and Vietnamese communities.

Progress is slowly being made along the river.

“This used to be trashed,” Cummings said about a newly restored area along the turning basin of the river.

The end of the cleanup may be 10 to 20 years away — though maintenance will continue — but the research done by CEP should be completed by the beginning of summer.

[Reach reporter Erinn Unger at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]