As DuPont eyes new lakeside trails, will they be on the hook for toxic soil?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- City of DuPont must accept or negotiate cleanup liability for Bluff and Old Fort Lake.
- Albatross Estates’ cleanup action plan expected this summer, then public comment.
- Homes must be built first to generate taxes and impact fees to fund parks/trails.
One day, the city of DuPont plans to build scenic trails along Old Fort Lake.
DuPont will have to jump through a lot of hoops to make that happen. The fact that the soil of the entire area is contaminated with arsenic, lead and other toxins further complicates matters.
Some DuPont residents took to Facebook recently, wondering what’s going to happen to the Old Fort Lake Subarea and if DuPont will be on the hook for clean up. After The News Tribune spoke with DuPont’s mayor, DuPont’s community development director and the Washington Department of Ecology last week, the short answer is yes, DuPont will have to pay for clean-up efforts. How much and when is still to be determined.
The Weyerhaeuser DuPont site, located at 2301 Center Drive, extends from Center Drive west to the Puget Sound. Most of the land is owned by Albatross Estates LLC, except for the Bluff (near the Wilkes Observatory) and the Old Fort Lake parcels, which are owned by the city of DuPont. The site is near the old ASARCO smelter plant, which operated in Ruston until 1986, as well as a dynamite plant that operated onsite from 1906 to 1976.
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Albatross Estates LLC plans to build a whole new village around The Home Golf Course with more than 2,000 new homes, in addition to new businesses, trails and entertainment venues, as previously reported by The News Tribune. The developer has been working with the Department of Ecology to clean up the site so it meets safety standards for recreational and residential use, said communications manager Cheryl Ann Bishop. Albatross Estates LLC’s cleanup action plan is expected to be completed this summer, which will then go out for public comment, Bishop said in an email last week.
The city of DuPont had a deadline of April 11 to accept liability to clean up the parcels it owns. Bishop said the city was aware it would incur liability when it purchased these areas. When asked about it April 8, Frederick said the city planned to send a letter to the Department of Ecology before the deadline requesting further negotiations about liability.
Other parties liable for the cleanup are the E.I. DuPont de Nemours Company and the Weyerhaeuser Company, the previous owners of the DuPont Works explosives manufacturing facility, per the Department of Ecology.
When would the trails open?
New trails on the city’s property haven’t been discussed much by the council, Frederick said. What needs to happen first is a plan approved by the state Department of Ecology to clean up the contaminated soil, and then residential and commercial development, he said.
“Once they build homes, then we’ll have property tax and other things [like] impact fees for the developer for parks,” he said. “Then once we have those things going, then we can probably have discussions about how we might develop some of the other areas out there that belong to us.”
Albatross Estates LLC is planning to build a mixture of single family, multifamily and middle housing (like duplexes, town homes and stacked flats) on this site, in addition to commercial businesses, parks and entertainment venues, per the Old Fort Lake Subarea Plan.
Frederick said any permits to build on the Old Fort Lake Subarea would go in front of the city’s planning committee, then to the city council for final approval.
How much will soil cleanup cost the city?
Frederick said he did not know how much DuPont will have to pay to clean up the parcels it owns. He said Albatross Estates LLC has proposed $5 million to clean up the land it owns.
“In 2025, the city independently investigated soil for lead and arsenic in the city’s Bluff and Old Fort Lake parcels,” Bishop said. “Regarding the cost for the city to clean up those areas, it’s hard to say. The city needs to further study the site and propose to Ecology the appropriate cleanup options. Once those cleanup options are agreed upon, they will be implemented. So, there are a lot of unknowns at this point to approximate the price of cleanup.”
This story was originally published April 12, 2026 at 6:00 AM.
