Dirty Fill Bill Pushed by Port,
Fought by Citizens
Citizens from the airport communities fanned out across the legislature to fight a bill written by the Port to get around requirements imposed by the Pollution Control Hearings Board. They testified at hearings on house bill HB1876 and its companion senate bill SB5787, the "dirty fill bills", which would allow contaminated fill in the embankment for a third Sea-Tac runway.

SB 5787 passed out of the Senate’s Natural Resources, Energy and Water Committee late last week, despite strong testimony against the bill from community members, environmental groups, and the Airport Communities Coalition. The House bill is still under consideration in the Agriculture & Natural Resources Committee. Contact information for the Committee, and for Frank Chopp, Speaker of the House, appears below.

The chairwoman of that committee, Rep. Kelli Linville (D. 42), told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer last week that she was “grappling” with questions about the Port-proposed bill, including the propriety of legislative intervention in a pending lawsuit. Chopp told the PI that he had been talking with the Port, but did not say what contacts he had with citizens. The battle is likely to reach full pitch this week because Wednesday, March 5 is the deadline for bills to come out of committee.

The bills were proposed by the Port of Seattle, as a way to undo an August 2002 ruling of the Pollution Control Hearings Board. That Board, after a two-week hearing in March, ruled that local streams, wetlands, and aquifer could only be properly protected by setting lower limits for contamination in runway fill than had been proposed by the Department of Ecology. The Board’s ruling is now on appeal to the state Supreme Court. The Port claims that it probably will not be able to find fill that is clean enough to meet the Board’s requirements. So, it wants the Legislature to declare that only one particular test may be used on the fill, a test that does NOT detect metallic contamination at levels ruled harmful by the Board.

Local papers carried dueling editorials, the PI admonishing the Port for trying to do an end run around environmental regulations and support from the Times, claiming "it's not about dirt".

Legislative contact information:
The legislative hotline (1.800.562.6000) has been out of commission for several days, so here are Olympia office phone numbers and E-mail addresses for Speaker Chopp and the members of the House Committee on Agriculture & Natural Resources (Speaker Chopp & Rep. McDermott are the only two who live in King County).

Frank Chopp, Speaker of the House of Representatives (D, 43) 360.786.7920 
chopp_fr@leg.wa.gov

Kelli Linville (D, 42), chair 360.786.7954 
linville_ke@leg.wa.gov

Bruce Chandler (R, 15) 360.786.7960
chandler_br@leg.wa.gov

William Eickmeyer (D, 35) 360.786.7902
eickmeye_bi@leg.wa.gov

Bill Grant (D, 16) 360.786.7828
grant_wi@leg.wa.gov

Janéa Holmquist (R, 13) 360.786.7932 
holmquis_ja@leg.wa.gov

Sam Hunt (D, 22) 360.786.7992
hunt_sa@leg.wa.gov

Dan Kristiansen (R, 39) 360.786.7967
kristian_@leg.wa.gov

Joe McDermott (D, 34) 360.786.7952
mcdermot_jo@leg.wa.gov

Ed Orcutt (R, 18) 360.786.7812
orcutt_ed@leg.wa.gov

Dave Quall (D, 40) 360.786.7800
quall_da@leg.wa.gov

Phil Rockefeller (D, 23) 360.786.7934
rockefel_ph@leg.wa.gov

Mark Schoesler (R, 9) 360.786.7844
schloese_ma@leg.wa.gov

Bob Sump (R, 7)  360.786.7908 
sump_bo@leg.wa.gov

Seattle PI
Seattle PI Editorial
Seattle Times Editorial

What the dirty-fill
bills would do.

The two dirty-fill bills – HB 1876 and SB 5787 – would have a very simple effect. They would allow the Port of Seattle to bring fill to the runway site that does not meet established standards for water-quality safety.

They would achieve this result rather subtly, by requiring the Department of Ecology, the Pollution Control Hearings Board, and the state judicial system to recognize the Synthetic Precipitation Leaching Procedure (SPLP) as the only test to be used in checking for 14 hazardous metals in runway fill.

This test is a good test for some purposes, but it does not detect metals at low levels.  It will NOT detect metals at levels that the Pollution Control Hearings Board has said are too high for the fill, for this huge project at this fragile site.

The Port of Seattle has told the Legislature that the SPLP test is scientifically recognized (true), is used by many States and by the US EPA (true), and was totally disallowed by the PCHB (not true). The Board only said not to use the test to allow contaminated materials to be placed in the runway embankment.

The Port conceded in legislative testimony that it wanted this test to be used so that it could bring in fill with contamination levels higher than those allowed by the Board. The Port claimed that it would not be able to find fill that met those criteria, though it brought in no experts to support that claim.

The Board heard testimony in March 2002 that the SPLP test had been mis-used by the Port. For example, the Board’s findings of fact note that “  … a Port consultant acknowledged [that] after site sampling shows a site has failed the MTCA Method A based initial screening criteria, the Port uses the SPLP to approve the importation of fill material.”

Other testimony raised other doubts.

Summarizing its concerns, the Board wrote, “The Board is concerned with the intended use of the SPLP process.  Therefore, the Board finds the SPLP process should not be used to allow the importation of fill above the fill criteria.”

In its Order, the Board made only one reference to the SPLP, in Para. 8:

8. The SPLP process may not be used to authorize the importation of fill that exceeds the modified fill criteria;

Obviously, the Board did not rule out appropriate use of the test – only the inappropriate one.

The practical effect of the legislation would be to over-ride Para. 8 of the PCHB Order. The result would be the same as making that paragraph read:

8. The SPLP process MUST be used to authorize the importation of fill that exceeds the modified fill criteria;

The PCHB order is posted on this site, and the reader may check every reference in the order to the SPLP by using the “Find” feature in Microsoft Word for Windows.