A federal report, outlining the risks of building highways on hazardous sites, warned that it's difficult to estimate fair prices for the sites and that juries tend to favor private sellers in price disputes. Sound Transit already faces a court battle over the price of one contaminated site, a former Rainier Brewery property that is being condemned for use as a maintenance base. The private owner argues that pollution should not affect the property's value because his development plans would not have required cleanup. Mark Menard, Sound Transit's hazardous-materials coordinator, said the agency can't just pick and choose its way around polluted parcels. Will Tanaka fills a tire at a University District Chevron station near Sound Transit's planned rail line.
Gasoline contaminates the groundwater here.
In South Seattle, Sound Transit should prepare for the worst when it comes to unexpected contamination along its light-rail route, state Ecology Department spokesman Curt Hart said. Sediments in the seven-mile lower Duwamish Waterway are so contaminated with PCBs, heavy metals and other contaminants that the federal Environmental Protection Agency declared it a Superfund site in January. We know there are over 150 sources of pollution. There aren't many other places in the state that have that many sources of pollution. Ecology Department and Sound Transit records show some sites with complex problems, such as a former landfill in the Rainier Valley that tests positive for contamination of groundwater, surface water, air, soil and sediments.