Seattle (InvestigateTV) – On the shores of Lake Union in Seattle, visitors can view the city’s storied skyline spread before them.
The Space Needle looms while seaplanes fly overhead, but it’s what sits buried beneath Gas Works Park – invisible to the eye – that often attracts attention.
It’s the remnants of a toxic legacy that defines this beloved landmark.
Echoes of the Emerald City’s past can be clearly seen through the coffee-colored towers that rise from the grassy center of Gas Works Park. They’re monuments of an industrial boom that literally brought light to Seattle.
For decades a set of old industrial structures that now sit fenced at the center of the park were used as part of a gasification plant, burning coal to create gas that illuminated the city.
“There’s a certain, you know, attraction to be able to reuse it and use these artifacts and kind of tell a story of what was here,” said David Graves, strategic advisor for Seattle Parks and Recreation.
The story of Gas Works Park is a complicated tale. It started back in the late 1950s when the gasification facility shut down. In 1962, the city of Seattle then bought the land that housed the defunct plant. But instead of tearing down the rusted remnants of history, city leaders sought a cleaner future – eventually deciding to use the property as a park.
Branden Born, chair of Urban Design and Planning at the University of Washington, understands why, saying, “I think that places like this show us possibility.”
The founder of UW’s landscape architecture program, Richard Haag, saw the opportunities before anyone. He proposed that instead of razing the industrial site to the ground, the city should focus on cleaning and greening the space for the public, while also honoring the site’s legacy by keeping the stacks that once pumped out fumes.
“When we sweep aside the history of a place, we lose the magic and significance of that place and make it kind of like anywhere,” Born said.
But there’s nothing like Gas Works Park, pretty much anywhere in the United States – although some revitalized industrial space comes close. New York City famously turned a former elevated freight track into the High Line, a walkable park that blends greenspace with art and food.
Atlanta’s BeltLine revitalized neglected railroad lines, turning them into a loop connecting the city with walking and biking trails as well as other attractions.
However, Gas Works Park is different. From the manufactured “Kite Hill” with paths sloping toward the water to the purposefully painted industrial pipework that encourages people to play and climb on its metal twists and turns.
“It took some doing and a lot of visioning and community meetings to move people away from the very standard understanding of we need to scrape this site clean, so we can work with what we have here and think about the structures and the history,” Born said.
While the park celebrates its industrial skeletons, there’s still a darker side that must be dealt with. Toxic contaminants remain in some areas – with Washington state officials saying full completion of the cleanup is still expected to take several years.
The biggest issues come from hazardous toxins – hydrocarbons and other substances – left by the former gasification plant that have tainted both the soil and water at the park. Back in the mid-’90s, Amber Wong – then an Environmental Protection Agency manager – even fought unsuccessfully to have the space added to the federal Superfund National Priorities list, which prioritizes the nation’s most contaminated locations for cleanup.
Now retired and working as a writer, Wong thinks many parkgoers are unaware of the area’s history.
“It’s one of the amazing things to me because people love this park. It’s kind of ironic because you’ve got these structures that are clearly industrial and people just don’t think about it, I bet,” she said.
It’s surprising considering the park has ample neon signage – specifically along its waterfront – indicating the presence of toxic contaminants that should be avoided. Swimming, wading and fishing in Lake Union from Gas Works Park are prohibited because the city’s website says, “the lake sediment contains hazardous substances”.
“It’s a bit like a twister board of contamination. It’s not consistent throughout. Some areas are clean, some areas have contamination,” Graves said.
That waterfront area is still being remediated. Project leaders and city officials like Graves reinforce that even in those spots, the risk of harm remains low – with millions already spent to ensure the park is a safe space.
Even Wong, the retired EPA manager agrees the exposure threat is low for the public because people don’t live on site – with the greatest potential danger potentially for children who might dig, eat or wade in the dirt near the shoreline. While not a frequent visitor, she does support the work that’s been done at Gas Works Park.
“This is kind of the goal. It’s always been the goal of the Superfund program, always the goal of the Brownfields program, to make sure that contaminated sites are brought back into beneficial reuse,” she said.
Urban planners and designers like Branden Born see it as a marriage, a perfect match of the right kind of remediation for the right kind of industrial site.
“We have a whole bunch of industrial or just heavily urban infrastructure in our cities that may actually function really well as part of the fabric, the enjoyment of the city if we look at it in a different light. And so, something like this anchors our history,” he said.
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