Ballard Blocks 2 property to come off contaminated sites list

Avrelle Harrington Ballard

The Department of Ecology is proposing to remove property in Ballard off of Washington’s list of contaminated sites.

The Ballard site, known as Block at Ballard II, has met state cleanup standards for commercial redevelopment the past few years. The current owner of the site has removed contaminated soil, wood waste, and an abandoned heating oil tank. The owner also put in an underground sheet pile around the site perimeter to keep arsenic-contaminated groundwater at the site.

Before Ballard Blocks II was developed, the contaminated site was jokingly referred to as “Lake Ballard”

The Department of Ecology is inviting public comment on the proposal before it is decided from Feb. 12 to March 13, 2021. To comment on this site and removal proposal, please visit the comment form here.

If the site is removed from the contaminated sites list, it will be reviewed by Ecology every five years and the site must get approval from Ecology before making changes that could affect contaminated soil.

The Department of Ecology currently finds this Ballard site to not pose a threat to human health or the environment and has succeeded in meeting the requirements for removal from Washington’s contaminated sites list.

For more information on the site’s cleanup and health/environment requirements, please visit here.

Featured photo: Ballard Blocks 2 while it was under construction in early 2016. Photo by Brian David Casey