History of landfill complicates current land use

Erin McKeown worries about what may be in the landfill underneath the Montlake parking lot and intramural sports fields, but she is more concerned that she does not know everything that was once dumped in the landfill.

According to the industrial hygienist from UW Environmental Health and Safety, the only way to be sure what is in the landfill is to dig it up. This, she said, is more of a health and ecological hazard than leaving the site alone.

The area around Montlake is a class-four Superfund site, on a one to five scale of environmental hazard, based on what examinations of soil samples have found and because what has been unearthed from the site has not been shown to be extremely hazardous. A class-one site requires immediate action, like Gasworks Park, while a class five is comparable to an average backyard.

However, the unearthing of, say, major heavy metals may up the classification.

McKeown said the site was given a low ranking because it is not believed to be leaking significant amounts of pollution into Lake Washington and it is not seen as an immediate threat to the environment or humans because the site is relatively undeveloped.

The safety to people around the site depends on the sanctity of the site. A new set of health issues and potential hazards would arise, according to McKeown, if major construction, or any major development to the land, uncovered the trash below.

As the landfill stands now, a cap of soil keeps the trash out of the air, while an exposed site would allow animals to spread the trash and would let water runoff carry the pollution off the site.

As construction workers dig around the area of the expanded recreational-sports facility, they are told what hazardous materials they may encounter, such as asbestos, and how to mitigate it.

However, being able to tell workers what they can expect is difficult when the UW does not know what is in the ground, which is complicated by the ambiguity of the landfill's history, said Karen Van Dusen, the director of environmental health and safety at the UW.

The dump was open for household and industrial waste from its opening in 1926 until November 1964, when the dump closed. According to McKeown and a study conducted by the King County health department in 1984, there was no oversight of what was dumped into the landfill, and almost anything could have been put there.

Because of the openness of the landfill, there are no reports or documentation available to show what is in the ground. McKeown said the main way her office knows what it is dealing with is through hearsay and by analyzing what has been dug up.

For example, the report authored in 1984 alluded to the dumping of toxins which implies a major environmental hazard. According to the study "the UW Physical Plant is known to have dumped waste transformer oil on (the) site."

Transformer oil contains extremely toxic chemicals known as PCBs, and is therefore more of an environmental hazard than regular motor oil.

According to information released by the Environmental Protection Agency, symptoms resulting from exposure to PCBs include swelling of the eyelids, numbness in arms and legs, nervous system problems and muscle spasms. Several occupational studies listed by the agency found significant increases of cancer-related deaths among persons exposed to PCBs.

So far, according to McKeown, no PCBs have been found in the landfill, but she said just because they have not been found does not mean they are not there.

"If PCBs were found, we would have to notify the Department of Ecology," she said, "(and) they would upgrade the site to a class 3 (Superfund site)."

McKeown added other hazardous materials, including asbestos and 20 cubic yards of lead-contaminated waste, have been found and removed from the site during miscellaneous construction work.

The area was not always a landfill, however, which also further complicates handling the area.

In 1916, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completed digging the ship canal, or Montlake Cut, connecting Lake Washington to Lake Union. This lowered the level of the lake approximately nine feet, creating Washington's largest peat bog, a type of wetland which produces high amounts of methane.

All the UW property between Hec Edmundson Pavilion and U. Village and between Lake Washington and Montlake Boulevard, as well as U. Village itself, sits on the site of this former wetland.

In 1926, the city of Seattle began dumping garbage into the peat bog. This landfill was not lined with cement like today's landfills, and so "when [the city] put the garbage in the wetlands, [it essentially] put it in the lake," said Van Dusen.

In the early 1950s, the city of Seattle stopped covering each day's garbage with dirt in favor of simply leaving the trash exposed. This attracted complaints from the Laurelhurst community and thousands of seagulls, who in turn attracted more complaints from the Laurelhurst community, said Randolph Hennes, a UW alumnus from 1952 and current faculty member.

"We would walk through the landfill because it was faster than taking 45th Street," the UW honors program associate and associate professor of history said, "but you had to watch out for the seagulls."

Another memorable feature of the dump were constant flames where engineers installed pipes to burn escaping methane gas from the peat bog and landfill.

"At night you'd see a bluish flame down there," said Hennes.

As Hennes recalled, the pipes maintained a continuous flame for at least 20 years.

While little evidence of the old methane vents exists now, the problem has not dissipated.

A study conducted in 2000 by Van Dusen's office, the county health office and the city of Seattle shows the methane is still an issue. A survey of 41 sites on the old landfill and peat bog showed "high concentrations of methane gas, at or above the explosive range, especially in the areas to the north and northeast of the IMA building and near the baseball and soccer fields."

According to Van Dusen, the levels of methane produced by the landfill and its foundation fluctuate, but the gas must still be mitigated.

The 2000 report details how workers and anyone near the landfill should take precautions, such as no smoking in enclosed areas, avoiding machinery which may cause sparks and providing methane vents and detector alarms in the buildings.

The history of the landfill continues to cause problems today, as construction projects on land must take into account methane gas surfacing and the unknown hazardous materials workers may encounter.

However, students now have a parking lot and grassy fields to walk through, rather than the exposed piles of trash Hennes remembers.

"The UW had the opportunity to get reclaimed land and to get sports fields," said Van Dusen. "It was left with the legacy of the landfill."