The River That Made Seattle by BJ Cummings

Author:BJ Cummings
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Published: 2020-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

5

River Revival

An Environmental and Cultural Renaissance

2000 TO THE PRESENT

FOR TWO FULL DAYS SINCE THE TERROR ATTACKS OF 9/11, THE SKIES over Boeing Field had been eerily silent. No planes flew in or out of the area that was normally inundated with the noise of jets taking off and landing at the King County Airport or passing over the river on their approach to Sea-Tac International Airport, about ten miles to the south. All flights nationwide had been grounded, and normal government services were effectively shut down. The country was in shock, and federal agencies were focused on ensuring that another attack was not imminent. Yet in the midst of this simultaneously frantic and frozen state of affairs, the gears of government ground on. On September 13, 2001, a notice appeared in the Federal Register announcing that the Lower Duwamish Waterway had been added to the National Priorities List, ranking as one of the nation’s most hazardous waste sites. The Duwamish River was now on the Superfund list, and plans for a full river cleanup would begin immediately.1

Despite the events of 9/11, the Superfund listing was headline news in Seattle. The front page of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer bore the headline “Duwamish Now on Cleanup List” on September 14, 2001, a century and a half, to the day, after the first white pioneers arrived to settle on the river. The Superfund site of 2001 was almost unidentifiable as the river where the Collins, Maple and Van Asselt families had first landed.

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