The Tacoma City Council held a study session on July 23, 2024, at 12:00 PM. The meeting covered updates on the Tacoma Smelter Plume cleanup and the Equity Index, as well as administrative items. Council members engaged in extensive discussion on both topics, emphasizing data-driven decision-making and equitable resource allocation. No public comments were received, but opportunities for public input during the regular meeting were announced.
I would like to call to order the city council study session of July 23rd, 2024. Clerk, you please call the roll. Councilmember Bushnell. Present. Councilmember Daniels. Councilmember Diaz. Deputy Mayor Hines. Here. Councilmember Rumba. Here. Councilmember Sidolgay. Here. Councilmember Scott. Here. Councilmember Walker. Here. Mayor Woodards, absent. Deputy Mayor and Council members, the study session material was sent to you at 1057. All right, thank you. Our first gender item is the Tacoma Smelter Plume Update. So if you are here to do that presentation, I'd invite you to come forward and you can join one of the five seats here in front. And it looks like I'll be calling on Environmental Services Assistant Division Manager Daniel De Leon Da Lyon to provide an introduction and begin the presentation. Okay. Thank you. Good afternoon, Deputy Mayor Hines and City Council members. I'm here to introduce Department of Ecology to talk about the Tacoma Smelter Plume Project. We have Justin Zacharin, Mary and Abbott from Washington State Department of Ecology, and there to give their 11th annual update of the project. The Tacoma Smelter Plume team has been working to address soil contamination from the former psycho smelter since 2006. The program started addressing areas where children play most, such as schools, child cares, and parks. Now the program is mainly addressed, is mainly focused on rising awareness about the Tacoma Smelter Plume, sharing information on individual actions that each of us can do to reduce our exposure to arsenic and lead in the soil. And residential soil replacement, removing and replacing soil in the most contaminated areas of North Tacoma and the Vash on Marie Island. Mary Am Abbott is the project manager for the Tacoma Smelter Plume Project. She has over 30 years experience with the cleanup and was part of the ecology group that negotiated the settlement with the Sarco. Her responsibilities including managing the budget and the overall team work. Justin Zakarin Zacharin is the remediation manager for the Tacoma Smelter Plume Project, and he is the point person for the team's sampling and soil replacement efforts. And in the audience with us too is Sarah Miller. She is the outreach coordinator for the Tacoma Smelter Plume Project, and she is responsible for outreach and communication with property owners and residents. Thank you. Thank you. Who am I turning it over to? Mary. And then you see it's right. Thank you, Deputy Mayor and Council members. We appreciate the opportunity to provide an update on the Tacoma Smelter Plume project. I'm going to give a little bit of an overview about the Tacoma Smelter Plume in case some folks aren't aware about the contamination from the old Asarco smelter. We'll also provide some updates on budget and then updates on our programs such as the Yard Program and Education and Outreach through the health departments to the communities. So there was a smelter that operated in North Tacoma for almost a hundred years. It started out as a lead smelter and then it switched over to be a copper smelter, specializing in ores that are very high in arsenic. And that smokestack was 571 feet tall. If you've been out to Point Reston, there's a restaurant called Stack 571, and that's to reflect the height of that stack.