A Pierce County dump will be part of WA’s first new state park in 40 years
Crews were hard at work Thursday afternoon clearing contaminated soil from the site of the former Eatonville Landfill, where for 30 years local residents dumped trash and debris without thinking of the consequences down the line.
Since the Nisqually Tribe alerted the Washington Department of Ecology of potential contamination to the groundwater and nearby wetlands in 2020, more than 40,000 tons of soil and garbage have been removed from site, which sits inside the boundaries of the Nisqually State Park near the town of Eatonville and the Mashel River.
Cleanup work is expected to be finished next year. Once it’s complete, the landowner, the Weyerhaeuser lumber company, intends to transfer ownership of the property to Washington State Parks, a company spokesperson told The News Tribune on Friday. In 2026 the Nisqually State Park will be the first new state park to open in more than 40 years.
From about 1950 to 1980, the town of Eatonville leased the two-acre parcel from Weyerhaeuser to use as a dump, a choice town administrator Eric Phillips contends was “probably not a good idea.”
The landfill did not have a liner below the trash to prevent pollution from the waste from moving into the soil, groundwater and surface water, said site manager Sam Meng. Since June, cleanup crews have discovered glass bottles, household waste, appliances, car parts, tires, empty drums that once held chemicals and pollution from recreational firearm shooting.
About 1,300 truck loads of waste and soil have been removed and sent to the LRI Landfill in Puyallup, Meng confirmed Thursday. Phillips said now LeMay Pierce County Refuge picks up trash from the town of Eatonville and transfers it to designated landfill sites.
The town of Eatonville has split the $14 million cleanup costs with Weyerhaeuser. Since 2020 the town has received $7.3 million in grants from the Department of Ecology to study how best to clean up the site and carry out a cleanup action plan, according to the department.
The town will have to find a way to pay for additional environmental monitoring at the site over the next decade, Meng said. Phillips told The News Tribune on Thursday the town will be looking to split those costs with Weyerhaeuser. Trees and other plants are scheduled to be planted this winter, Meng said.
Luke Thies, a Weyerhaeuser remediation project manager, said Friday the company “has enjoyed working with the Town of Eatonville and will continue splitting the costs of the project.”
The Nisqually Tribe has been “a powerful mover and support of the project,” and Tribal chairman Ken Choke said the health of the Nisqually River and its tributaries, which include the Mashel River, “is central to the Nisqually Tribe’s identity, culture and responsibility as stewards of the land,” per a Department of Ecology blog published Oct. 22.
The Nisqually Tribe has treaty hunting, gathering and fishing rights in the Nisqually watershed, and tribal members reached out to the Department of Ecology in 2020 about the landfill site after growing concerned about the level of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in the Nisqually River system, Meng said. PBDEs are chemicals used as flame retardants in products like textiles, furniture and electronics that have been linked to health and environmental problems.
Although the department confirmed the Eatonville Landfill was not a source of PBDEs in the Nisqually River system, the landfill could have been a source for metals like zinc, which the department is trying to remediate in the surface water, Meng said.
“For generations, we have upheld our obligation to protect these waters for the benefit of all who depend on them — human and other-than-human alike,” Choke said in the blog. “The cleanup of this long-polluted site marks a meaningful step forward. Together, we are restoring the land, protecting the river and ensuring that salmon and future generations can thrive. This is what true partnership and environmental justice look like.”
