Hazard sites listed for Cental Kitsap

In a recent biennial Hazardous Sites List from the state’s Department of Ecology, Kitsap County included 35 sites.

Silverdale came off looking pretty good. Neighboring Bremerton has problems.

Kitsap County had about the average number of sites per county in the state, ranging in seriousness from “1” to “5” — with “1” the worst.

Silverdale sites: Ace Paving Maintenance shop with a ranking of 4, and Howerton Silverdale Landfill with a ranking of 3. Both are awaiting remedial action, according to Norm Peck, an engineer with the Department of Ecology.

Bremerton, on the other hand, has 11 sites — ranging across the scale:

Brem-Air Disposal, 1; Chevron Tank Farm on Port Washington Narrows, 2; Constitutional Avenue Landfill, 5; the Deno property, 1; Evergreen Park, 5; Head of Bay, 4; Lamberts Radiator Shop, 1; Lofthus Bulk Plant, 1; old Bremerton gas works and Sesko property, 1; Pederson Oil site, 4; Vockrodt Dump, 4.

Five of the 11 sites ranked 1.

“Old auto-mechanic shops with a little oil spilled on the ground out back are typical of a 5 ranking,” said Peck. “A leaky heating oil tank at a home is a 5. Dry cleaners with larger spills or amounts of dry cleaning fluids are typical of a 4 ranking. They’re a little more problematical because the fluids are carcinogenic. An exploded transformer on a power pole would rank a 3 or even a 2,” he said. “Landfills are usually 2 or 3, sometimes 1.”

“Worst sites, with a ranking of 1, are historically large industrial sites,” he said. “Kitsap doesn’t have a lot of these.”

He said Subase Bangor and the Naval Undersea Warfare Center at Keyport fall under the jurisdiction of the federal Superfund clean-up, and are not ranked by the state.

“The federal standards are less stringent than ours,” added Peck.

Other major cities or communities in Kitsap: Port Orchard has 13 sites; Bainbridge Island, 2; Poulsbo, 0.

“It’s hard to pick a worst city (in a county or the state) because the rankings are based on so many different substances and circumstances,” he said.

The ranking system tells Ecology which site needs cleaning up the most. Hazardous materials include oil, gasoline, heavy metals, wood preservatives, pesticides and cleaning solvents, among other things.

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