Cleaning Up the Thea Foss Waterway - a Photographic Journey
Type:
Presented during:
WODCON XVIII - 2007 Orlando, Florida, USA
Authors:
Lloyd
Abstract: Manson Construction completed cleanup of the Thea Foss Waterway Superfund Project for the City of Tacoma in the spring of 2006. The Thea Foss Waterway has served the City of Tacoma as a center for marine industry and commerce for over 100 years. Manson Construction began cleanup of the Thea Foss Waterway in the fall 2002 with several specific cleanup actions for piling removal and shoreline stabilization in preparation for the major Superfund remedial action work, which followed in 2003. Typical sediment contaminants in the Thea Foss Waterway included polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), petroleum hydrocarbons, phenols, PCBs, heavy metals, and pesticides (including DDT), as “chemical contaminates of concern.” Although the primary basis for CERCLA arose from historical industrial and commercial use of the waterway resulting in sediment contamination, more recent vintage chemicals of concern, such as the phthalate esters, appear to have arisen from stormwater discharges into the Thea Foss Waterway.
Cleanup of the working waterway included hydraulic and clamshell dredging of over 500,000 cy of contaminated and non-contaminated sediments; construction of a confined disposal facility (CDF) in the former St. Paul Waterway; channel and slope capping, shoreline stabilization; marina demolition and new construction; new levee construction, infrastructure and facility construction; and habitat restoration and mitigation. Concurrent with cleanup of the Thea Foss Waterway, Manson Construction was also conducting the smaller Superfund remedial action cleanup of the adjacent Middle Waterway for the Middle Waterway Action Committee consisting of principal responsible parties (PRP’s) contributing to the Middle Waterway adjacent to the Thea Foss Waterway.
This paper is presented to WODCON XVIII as a non-technical, photographic journey covering four years of superfund cleanup in a marine environment. Of the thousands of photographs taken during this superfund work, those represented cover major portions of the work. With a few exceptions, photographs presented were taken by the Manson Construction’s Water Quality Monitoring Group to provide this unique on-the-water perspective as the work was promoted.
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