Several weeks ago, I post four blogs about the situation at Magnuson Park in Seattle. There are a couple of rooms in old buildings and several outside areas in which radiation has been detected that was left over from repair of radium dials on airplanes during World War II when the park was an Naval airbase. The city of Seattle found out about the radiation in 2010 but did nothing about it aside from putting up some fences and small signs.
This last March, information began leaking out into the community and media about the radiation. In mid-May, the Navy invited the public to an open house to explain their plan to clear up the left over radiation. Working with the Washington State Department of Health, the Navy had developed a plan which called for an emergency cleanup that did not include public meetings and environmental impact statements. The State Department of Ecology which has ultimate authority of such projects was brought into the project only a few weeks before the open house. The Navy was calling for written comments to be submitted by the end of June and intended to start work on the project in mid-July.
The meeting was turbulent as Seattle citizens and Gerry Pollet, a Washington State Representative for the district that contains the park, bombarded the Navy and Washington State representatives with questions about the project. The main concern was that the Navy was going to use the standards of the Washington State Department of Health for allowable remaining radiation levels which are lower than the Washington State Department of Ecology standards or several Federal standards. Citizens and Representative Pollet expressed doubts that public input would be taken seriously by the Navy and that Magnuson Park would be safe for community use after the Navy project was completed. There was a general call for more public input to the process and for the Washington State Department of Ecology, as the senior agency in the project, to step up and override the Navy’s plans to start the cleanup in mid-July.
The end of June has arrived and the Navy and Washington State Departments of Health and Ecology have agreed to extend the time for public comments to the end of July and to hold public meetings about the situation at Magnuson Park. This is a positive sign. However, the Navy has announced that it intends to start preliminary work on July 8th. Obviously, the “preliminary work” will not be informed or altered by public comment during the month of July. Documentation about the situation at the Park has been requested from the Seattle Parks Department but will not be publicly available until about the same time that the Navy intends to start work. The Navy has not even responded to Freedom of Information request for documentation about the site.
The Navy has publicly stated that the Washington State Department of Ecology has the ultimate authority in this cleanup project. However, the fact that the Navy is proceeding without waiting for public meetings and public input seems to indicate that they do not actually respect the authority of the Washington State Department of Ecology or the citizens who use Magnuson Park. Public pressure is mounting for the Washington State Department of Ecology to take over the project and follow normal procedures for such cleanup projects.
