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Fifth-graders from the Seattle Girls' School joined Nova High School students on the 39-foot Admiral Jack pontoon boat Thursday for a toxic tour of the Duwamish River. They left from Harbor Island Marina. The tour was sponsored by the Duwamish River Clean-up Coalition, or DRCC, and led by its director, James Rasmussen, a Duwamish River expert and member of the Duwamish tribe, and Alberto Rodriguez, with DRCC education and outreach. They were on hand to discuss the river's history, including its critical role in the lives of the Duwamish Indians, as well as causes for its pollution, and possible solutions. They also fielded a boat load of adult questions from the kids who apparently had done their homework on the waterway.

The fifth-grade teacher Jerda Smeltzer chaperoned her kids, and Stephany Hazelrigg her high schoolers.

This tour was somewhat of a dry run for Sunday's Halloween Haunted Toxic Boat Tour on the Duwamish, open to the public. According to the DRCC, on that tour "several spooky guides will lead you on a two-hour boat tour of the Duwamish River Superfund Cleanup Site. You'll hear stories of local Native American supernatural legends, early settler stories from Georgetown and South Park neighborhoods, and learn about the terrifying realities of toxic chemicals in the Duwamish! Also learn about the natural and human history of the Duwamish Valley, environmental health and (in)justice, and the future of Seattle's very own Superfund cleanup site on this guided boat tour. (For tickets, click here.)

Rodriguez asked the students, "Does anyone know what a 'Superfund site' is?"

One of the younger kids smiled and thought he said 'super-fun'.

"That's what I thought too when I was younger, but this word is with a 'D' at the end, and it's not fun at all," said Rodriguez, connecting with the kids. "It's a place that's really polluted, with toxic chemicals. And if you make the Superfund list, it is for the most polluted sites in the country. There was a fund, from some of our taxes, that went to this, to clean toxic places.

"Because the economy is bad there's no Superfund anymore to clean the river," he said. "So now the people responsible for polluting the river are responsible for paying for the cleanup. The whole 5.5 miles of the river is a Superfund site, but five 'hotspots' have been identified, called 'early action sites', and are so polluted they need to be cleaned first. We can't wait for the whole river to be cleaned.

"PCB's are one of more than 40 chemicals of concern in the Duwamish River causing concern," Rodriguez continued. PCB's are real bad. They cause cancer, They're banned, but are still left over in pipes, drainage. There are toxic chemicals In some paint on old buildings, in caulkings, that end up in the river. There is arsenic, lead, and mercury which gets in fish."

The boat stopped by the Duwamish Diagonal combined sewer overflow storm drain, which looks like a small solid cement two-car garage.

Rodriguez and Rasmussen explained that when it rains too much the rain prevents treatment plants to process all the waste, and raw sewage come out of the Duwamish Diagonal, some waste traveling from as far away as SODO and Beacon Hill.

"They built large tunnels underneath but we still have two to four (rain) events a year here," said Rasmussen. "King County has now moved the schedule up and these storm drains along the river will have a treatment facility on the outside.

"For the Duwamish people, we lived here for thousands of years, and this place was our industrial area," said Rasmussen of the historic river. "Wildlife were things what we ate. Cedar was gathered for our canoes. Everything we needed came from here. Now this is the most important industrial area, perhaps on the entire West Coast. Operations that happen here don't happen anywhere else in the country."

Rasmussen told the wide-eyed students about John Beal, the local legend and river steward who Rasmussen credited for sparking his interest in cleaning the Duwamish River. Beal was given six months to live because of a heart condition, in 1979, so he began cleaning rubbish along the river's edge from his boat. Others joined him including the EPA. He live another 27 years.

You can read about John Beal here and in this PI piece.

Tickets are still available for the Duwamish River Halloween Toxic Boat Tour. Again, click here for ticket information.

NEW ANNOUNCEMENT:

The EPA and DRCC/TAG will be holding a News Conference at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, November 1 at the Duwamish Tribe's Longhouse and Cultural Center, 4705 West Marginal Way SW, to announce a $100,000 EPA grant to DRCC/TAG to launch the Duwamish Valley Healthy Communities Project. The initiative will work with Duwamish Valley residents and businesses to identify, prioritize and develop actions plans to address environmental health threats and disparities from all sources, ranging from air, land and water pollution to lack of access to open space and healthy food. The effort will parallel DRCC/TAG's work to clean up the Duwamish River Superfund Site.