Commencement Bay Takeaways  

Today, the Port of Tacoma’s marine cargo and real estate operations help support 42,000+ jobs and nearly $3 billion in economic activity.  Unlike private developers, public organizations like ports can offset the high costs by leveraging state and federal funding and grants. Remediation work can be complicated, slow, and expensive. To date, the port has spent more than $200 million on remediating approximately 1,100 acres, with plans to clean up several hundred more acres.

The transformation of industrial sites like the former Tacoma smelter site into popular waterfront destinations like Dune Peninsula Park and Point Ruston demonstrates the potential for recreational and business attractions. Across much of the last century, the haphazard dumping of industrial waste offshore created a 26-acre peninsula of toxic slag outside where the Asarco smelter once stood on the shoreline.

Although the smelter shut down more than three decades ago, that peninsula of lead- and arsenic-tainted waste material long remained a conspicuous artifact of Tacoma’s long run as a deeply polluted industry town. After Asarco Tacoma’s 1985 shutdown, the peninsula’s use as a breakwater and parking lot for the Tacoma Yacht Club built atop it drastically underutilized this unique slice of urban geography. The peninsula allows waterfront vistas of Mount Rainier, Mount Baker and the Olympics, and sits next to the 760-acre old-growth forest of Point Defiance Park. But the smelter produced toxic lead and arsenic that required Superfund designation and a multi-county cleanup that is still going on 34 years later. The pollution fell densest at the smelter site and the adjoining slag peninsula. The visionary effort of rehabilitating the peninsula to an 11-acre public park required moving more than 20,000 truckloads of dirt and cost $75 million. Layers of capping material beneath the peninsula’s surface seal in the toxic materials that remain deeply underfoot.

The marinas and condominium buildings along the reborn Foss area are the product of work by the Foss Waterway Development Authority, a city-appointed agency created to revive what the city labeled an “underutilized and blighted waterfront area in the heart of the city.” Its work remains ongoing. The agency is helping to raise $12 million to build two parks and working to find developers for a handful of parcels.

“What’s great about this waterway is that it’s a working waterway at the foot of a downtown,” said Norm Gollub, the development authority’s director. Marinas along the Foss report waiting lists for their allotments of slips where people can live aboard their boats full-time. “That’s never happened before,” said Alan Gregory, a maintenance worker at Foss Harbor Marina. “People want to be here.”

Gregory, 51, has worked at the marina since 2005, when the waterway was being dredged. He said the cleanup of the waterway did come with one complaint. “Some of the old-timers down here would complain when it started to get cleaned up,” he said, “because stuff would grow on their boats and they’d have to go clean it off. That never had happened before. Nothing would grow in the water.”

The Commencement Bay Trustees, including NOAA, USFWS, Ecology, the Puyallup Tribe, and the Muckleshoot Tribe, have worked to restore over 300 acres of habitat throughout the Puyallup River Watershed. Site stewardship is a critical component of habitat recovery. Activities include removal of invasive vegetation, supplemental plantings, trash removal, and management of public use. 

Place of Circling Waters is estuarine intertidal/riverine tidal habitat. Once a gravel mine and inert waste landfill, this 30 acres is now valuable intertidal marsh, stream channels, and forested open space. 

The Inner Hylebos Peninsula habitat site was created by converting upland into intertidal mudflat to provide habitat for epibenthic organisms, thereby creating a food source for and rearing habitat for juvenile migrating salmon. The site was constructed and is still owned and managed by the Puyallup Tribe of Indians.

The Washington State Department of Natural Resources has begun the undertaking of removing pilings at Dickman Mill Park. Located on Commencement Bay, the derelict structure has been polluting the area for years as removal projects were stunted by a lack of funding, which was finally remedied through legislation in 2023. While much of the structure is gone, what remains are wooden pillars known as pilings. The pilings are harmful to the local ecosystem. Dickman Mill closed in 1977 and burned down in 1979, destroying most of the site – except for the toxic pilings, which have continued to harm salmonids, eelgrass and kelp. Puyallup Tribal Council Chairman Bill Sterud shared his perspective on why this project was important to the water and the Tribe.

“It’s exciting for us any time we can take something out of the water that is killing fish. This has been killing fish. … When I see one of these logs being pulled out, the creosote, the pollution, it makes my heart sore. It makes me feel really good. I’m glad that this is taking place,” Sterud said.

Cleanup projects such as this one are important to restoring the area, and help take steps to put an end to the pollution of the past near and on the Puyallup Reservation.

Cleanup projects such as this one are important to restoring the area, and help take steps to put an end to the pollution of the past near and on the Puyallup Reservation. “We have lost over 60% of our kelp and eelgrass beds in the entire Puget Sound, and over 90% in the South Sound where we stand today,” said DNR Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz. “We have a huge responsibility of restoring this habitat, our kelp and eelgrass for our salmon not just to survive, but to thrive. It starts by taking action on facilities like this.”

Metro Parks Tacoma Chief Planning Officer Marty Stump said the piling removal project is another step forward to returning the area and ecosystem back to a healthy place. “While the shoreline form here in the 19th and 20th centuries conveyed purpose, industry and progress, today, we see our waterfront through the lens of environmental stewardship and restoration, drawing upon the wisdom of Indigenous peoples who have known the Salish Sea as home for millennia,” Stump said.

The cleanup efforts have motivated some locals to become more involved, recognizing the importance of protecting the bay for future generations. Many locals are involved in organizations like Communities for a Healthy Bay, which actively work to mobilize the community to push for thorough and lasting cleanup efforts. They participate in patrols, advocate for stronger protections, and foster environmental stewardship.

Despite cleanup progress, ongoing threats from industrial runoff, oil spills, and stormwater pollution continue to affect water quality and pose potential health risks. Local organizations and tribal leaders express concerns about the level of contamination in water and food sources, particularly for those who rely on subsistence fishing.

Melissa Malott, executive director of Communities For A Healthy Bay, says she often sees people on the dock in front of her organization’s office who are subsistence fishing — living off of the protein from the fish they’re catching in the Foss Waterway.

“That means they are getting extra high doses of the contaminants in those fish,” Malott said. “We need to have more protective standards of fish consumption and how much toxins we are okay with having in fish. It should be a much lower amount.” 

Consumption advisories are in place for many fish species and shellfish in the bay due to elevated levels of pollutants like PCBs, mercury, and other contaminants, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Excessive exposure to these chemicals can cause nerve damage, cancer, and birth defects, says the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department. 

Industrial pollution from the Port of Tacoma and surrounding industries releases harmful pollutants that contribute to increased rates of respiratory illnesses like asthma, cardiovascular disease, and other health issues.