What: Open house meeting on the Pacific Wood Treating cleanup project
Where: Ridgefield Community Center, 210 N. Main Ave., Ridgefield
When: 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16,
RIDGEFIELD — The expansive steam-injection system at the former Pacific Wood Treating site isn’t removing toxic chemicals and sludge from the ground anymore. That process wrapped up last year.
But the system — a crowded maze of pipes, pumps and tanks at the Port of Ridgefield — isn’t idle, either. Workers are now using it to clean itself, flushing unused components of the equipment even as they take it apart to eventually scrap it.
The decommissioning process marks one of the final stages of a cleanup
effort that goes back more than a decade. But by the end of this year, the port hopes to transform the old wood treatment plant into a clean slate. That means removing the rest of the steam system, some 200 wells, plus nearly all of the aging buildings that have stood for decades.
Brent Grening, the port’s executive director, spent a recent afternoon walking the site just outside his office. He also spent a brief moment looking into the future.