Work will begin this month to clean up playgrounds at 37 day care centers in Pierce and King counties, sites that were contaminated by arsenic and lead from the old Asarco smelter in Ruston.

The state Department of Ecology awarded a $255,768 contract to Nordic Construction of Tacoma and company owner Jack Miller said his crews will start work in about two weeks.

Cleaning up the properties will wind down a program started in 2005 to identify schools and day care centers in the “plume” of toxic chemicals spewed over Lakewood, Tacoma, Federal Way, Des Moines, Normandy Park, Vashon Island and parts of Seattle for decades, and to clean them up. The stack’s plume fell over 1,000 square miles, but the cleanup program concentrated on the 315 square miles closest to the smelter and most contaminated by its operations.

The smelter opened in 1890 and ceased operations in the mid-1980s. The landmark 562-foot smokestack, erected in 1917, was demolished in January 1993.

State Rep. Dave Upthegrove, D-Des Moines, whose constituents included many of the “downwinders” affected by the fallout, sponsored the 2005 bill that has led to the cleanup of contaminated soils at schools and day care centers.

“Some of the highest levels of contamination are in Normandy Park,” Upthegrove said. “It (the cleanup program) shouldn’t be a burden on these day cares and it shouldn’t be a thing that parents should worry about.”

Arsenic is prevalent in Western Washington and it is a relatively low health risk, so the program concentrated on playgrounds, “where kids eat dirt,” he said.

Both arsenic and lead are metals that naturally occur in the environment. For arsenic, the so-called “background level” is 7-10 parts per million. For lead it is 20-24 parts per million.

To qualify for cleanup, the play areas had to have an average of 20 parts per million of arsenic or a single reading above 40 parts per million of arsenic. For lead, the readings had to average more than 250 parts per million or have a maximum of 500 parts per million or more.

More than 200 public and private schools and nearly 600 day care centers were evaluated. An average of eight samples were tested from each site where soils were studied. Some didn’t need to be sampled because they had no play area or one covered with blacktop.

As of June 30, 31 schools and 82 day care centers had play areas where the levels of arsenic or lead exceeded those levels.

“We’re getting close to being the last ones,” said Amy Hargrove, Soil Safety Program coordinator for the state Department of Ecology. “We are continuing the soil sampling, so some more will pop up. And there are a few schools remaining.”

The law requires schools and child care centers to allow site access for soil testing, she said. “If they have results above the criteria for arsenic or lead that they either agree to soil safety actions or provide written notification to parents,” said Hargrove. She added that the compliance level has been very good.

Hargrove said 13 day care centers – those with the highest levels of lead or arsenic – will be cleaned up by Nov. 30. The remainder will be finished by April 30, 2010, she said.

“The worst need to be done first,” she said.

North Tacoma Montessori on Proctor Street is at the bottom of the list because the metal readings are so low and there is only a small area of ground off to the side of the building. The day care center used to be a convenience store so much of the property on the site is covered with asphalt.

“It’s always been covered with play (wood) chips,” said owner Kate Healy. “As a matter of fact, I already put down 12 inches of play chips to get re-licensed last year.”

The contractor probably will take six inches of soil and replace it with clean top soil and she’ll put play chips back down, she said.

Contractor Miller said Nordic Construction has done of lot of remediation work.

“Typically, we go in with a small excavator because you can move them around real easily, take out the top six inches of the area that has been identified by DOE and then they come back and test again to see if we got enough of it,” Miller said.

Thereafter, the contaminated soil can be replaced by clean top soil and covered by sod or wood chips, he said.

Hargrove said the schools were cleaned first because it was easier to get access to them. There is considerable turnover among day care centers, which is why more are bound to be added to the cleanup list as they come into being and register with the state Department of Early Learning, she said.

“One of the challenges we have is that there are new ones,” Upthegrove said. “But I think we’re going to 99 percent of the way there.”

Joseph Turner: 360-786-1826

joe.turner@thenewstribune.com

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