Seattle port property may have exposed renters to dioxins
The Port of Seattle may have unknowingly leased the King County Housing Authority an apartment complex built on contaminated soil and in the process exposed hundreds of low-income renters to cancer-causing dioxins.
The port's efforts over the past year to raze the 234-unit Lora Lake apartment complex near SeaTac Airport for industrial or retail use, which resulted in lawsuits and a court order preventing any demolition, led to the discovery of the contamination.
On Friday, the port announced that it cancelled the sale of the property to the housing authority, which port officials have claimed was under pressure from elected officials and housing advocates.
The port bought the apartment complex in 1998 and a year later leased 162 of the units to the King County Housing Authority. When the housing authority lease ran out last year, the port decided to tear down the complex in a plan that called for the construction of a big box store or warehouse on the site. The housing authority was forced to relocate nearly 250 tenants of the complex and several housing advocates sued to stop the demolition of the complex.
Following protests and an injunction that stopped the port moving forward, the port decided to sell the complex intact to the housing authority.
However, during preparatory studies for demolition, the port tested the soil at the site, which had been an auto-wrecking yard before a private developer built the apartments in the late 1980s. Despite the state giving the site a clean bill of environmental health when the apartments were built, the port testing found high levels of dioxin contamination. Dioxins are a family of chemical compounds, some of which are known to increase the likelihood of cancer under certain exposure criteria.
The housing authority said it did not test the site when it began renting the units because agency policy is to only test when purchasing property, not leasing it.
The port estimates that the housing authority would need to spend upwards of $8 million to clean up the site.
With the sale of the property cancelled, the port now plans to move forward with its original plans to demolish the apartments and build either a big box store or warehouse on the site.
Public health officials, however, are concerned that former residents of the complex may have suffered exposure to dioxins at the site.
Seattle and King County experts plan to spend a month looking at the possible exposure of former residents, though at this point, health officials say it is difficult to assess the risk to any former resident.