Crews were hard at work Thursday afternoon clearing contaminated soil from the site of the former Eatonville Landfill, where for 30 years local residents dumped trash and debris without thinking of the consequences down the line.
Since the Nisqually Tribe alerted the Washington Department of Ecology of potential contamination to the groundwater and nearby wetlands in 2020, more than 40,000 tons of soil and garbage have been removed from site, which sits inside the boundaries of the Nisqually State Park near the town of Eatonville and the Mashel River.
Cleanup work is expected to be finished next year. Once it’s complete, the landowner, the Weyerhaeuser lumber company, intends to transfer ownership of the property to Washington State Parks, a company spokesperson told The News Tribune on Friday. In 2026 the Nisqually State Park will be the first new state park to open in more than 40 years.
From about 1950 to 1980, the town of Eatonville leased the two-acre parcel from Weyerhaeuser to use as a dump, a choice town administrator Eric Phillips contends was “probably not a good idea.”…