Environmental group leading effort to clean up Tacoma's Commencement Bay



TACOMA -- The State’s Toxic Clean up fund is running low on revenue from the tax they charge industrial polluters. While Q13 News featured the problems in areas around Commencement Bay and Tacoma, there are toxic sites in queue to be cleaned up all over the state. Thousands of sites, both big and small, remain hazardous to the environment and your family.

If you’d like to see where the toxic sites are in your areas— check out this link from the Washington State Department of Ecology. It provides a moveable map so you can zoom into the neighborhoods where your family works, plays, and travels through every day. The legislation to put a minimum fee that industries would have to pay for past pollution is currently in the state house.

If it doesn’t gain any traction in in the legislature’s ongoing special sessions, the sponsor Rep. Strom Peterson, will reintroduce it in the next full session in Olympia. The Snohomish County democrat who represents Edmonds, Lynnwood and Mukilteo says it’s shame so much valuable industrial land is unable to be used.

“If we are allowing the industries that caused the problem initially to walk away hands clean, then it puts even more pressure on the citizens of Washington that need clean waterways that need economic development that need good jobs in places like this,” says Rep. Peterson.