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Lower Duwamish Waterway Source Control Investigation

Fox Avenue Building LLC Site

Site Location

The Fox Ave Building property is located at 6900 Fox Avenue South on the east side of the Lower Duwamish Waterway.  The Fox Avenue Building Site (Site) is defined by the extent of contamination at and migrating from the Fox Avenue Building property.  The Site is bordered to the north by South Willow Street, to the south by the Whitehead Property (Historical Tyee Lumber Co.), to the east by an empty lot known as “Lot 11” which is on East Marginal Way South, and to the west by Fox Avenue South (see figure on page eight).

Site Background

The Fox Avenue site is located in an industrial area near the Lower Duwamish Waterway in south Seattle.  A number of commercial and industrial buildings are located within a block of the Site.  On the other side of East Marginal Way South is a residential neighborhood.  The Site occupies an area of about two and one half acres. 
 
In 1918, the Seattle Chain and Manufacturing Company leased four lots (city block) from King County until 1937, when it purchased it outright.   Seattle Chain and successor companies operated coke and oil fired furnaces and warehouses on the property.  For the next 20 years, ownership of the property changed hands several times until 1956 when Marian Properties LLC Enterprises bought the property and leased a portion of it to Great Western Chemical (GWC).  GWC started operations in a former Seattle Chain warehouse building, which it rebuilt into a larger warehouse on the west end of the property.  GWC, owned by McCall Oil Company, operated a chemical and petroleum repackaging and distribution facility on the property.  GWC received bulk chemical products and repackaged, transferred, and distributed both liquid and dry chemical products.  GWC pumped bulk product through buried pipes and hoses on the surface.  The facility had a number of underground and above ground storage tanks which stored chemical and petroleum products, including solvents, acids and lube oils.

Other lessees of the Site during the 1950s and 1960s included Campbell Chain Company, which leased the warehouse in the northern part of the property, and the Tyee Lumber Company, which leased parts of Lot 11 and the Seattle Chain and Manufacturing Company building for storage and product assembly to the west and south of GWC’s operations.  From the 1960s through the 1980s, GWC replaced and upgraded much of their warehouse structures.  In 1969, the buildings on Lot 11 were torn down and Tyee Lumber Company shut down.  Throughout the years, a number of chemicals and petroleum products were handled at the Site.
 
Fox Avenue Building LLC bought the GWC property from Marian Properties LLC in 2003 after GWC filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001.  Cascade Columbia Distribution now leases the property from Fox Avenue Building and uses the warehouse as a chemical distribution facility.
 
The groundwater from this Site reaches the Lower Duwamish Waterway making this site a concern for source control.  In addition to overall site cleanup, source control at this Site will be done to ensure recontamination of the Lower Duwamish Waterway Superfund site does not occur.

Contamination

Contamination at the site is the result of industrial use since the 1918. The contaminants of concern in the soil and groundwater are:

• Chlorinated solvents.
• Petroleum hydrocarbons.
• Semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs).
• Dioxins and furans.

Previous Cleanup Work

In 1989, Great Western Chemical (GWC) closed six underground storage tanks (USTs) in place which still remain under a concrete pad.  The same year, GWC also decommissioned ten other USTs, and removed these from the property in 1990.  As part of an overall remodel, GWC retained the services of Hart-Crowser to provide engineering assistance in the removal of the tanks.
 
In 1991, GWC entered into Agreed Order #DE TC91-N203 with Ecology.  Under this Agreed Order, GWC agreed to do a Remedial Investigation/Feasibility Study.  In 1993 GWC finished the Remedial Investigation and Preliminary Risk Assessment Report (RI/PRA).  More work was done following this report and summarized in a Supplemental Remedial Investigation and Feasibility Study report in 2000.  Previous investigations and cleanup work performed by GWC and Fox Avenue Building since 2000 include:

• Soil and groundwater sampling.
• Seep and soil vapor sampling.
• Installation of groundwater monitoring wells.
• Various other investigations to define the nature and extent of contamination.
• Operation of a soil vapor extraction system
• Pilot testing of various remediation technologies, including injections of chemical oxidants into groundwater.
• Underground and above ground storage tank removals.

Agreed Order

• Conduct an interim cleanup action to address the contamination reaching the Lower Duwamish Waterway.
• Do a source area silts data gap investigation.
• Collect vapor samples to find whether tetrachloroethylene (PCE) vapors from the subsurface are reaching the office portion of the Fox Avenue facility at concentrations of concern.
• Evaluate restarting the existing Soil Vapor Extraction (SVE) system if a vapor pathway into the Fox Avenue warehouse still exists.
• Prepare a Supplemental Feasibility Study to evaluate cleanup action alternatives for the Site and enable Ecology to select a cleanup action that will attain cleanup levels under state law within a reasonable restoration time frame.
• Prepare a draft Cleanup Action Plan (CAP) for Ecology approval that details the proposed cleanup actions to address the contamination at the Site.

Site Documents

• Fact Sheet - December 2008
• Final Agreed Order - January 2009
• Draft Public Particpation Plan - January 2009
• Responsiveness Summary - May 2009

Related Information

• More information on the Lower Duwamish Waterway
• Watershed Information WRIA #9

Additional Resources

• Glossary and acronyms used by the Toxic Cleanup Program
• Cleanup Process: Major Steps & Definitions
• Data Submittal Requirements for All Cleanup Sites
• Facility/Site Atlas
• Toxics Cleanup publications