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PHOTO BY JOHN LARSON

PHOENIX RISING. Cleanup efforts along Thea Foss Waterway were recognized with a Phoenix Award from U. S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Foss Waterway cleanup recognized with Phoenix Award

In more than 100 years Thea Foss Waterway has come full circle.

Once a bustling industrial area that connects to the Puget Sound, the Foss gradually turned into a strip of vacant buildings and toxic contaminants. Today, following a $105 million cleanup project, the Foss is once again a vibrant place of business.

A significant amount of private investment has occurred not only along the Foss but also downtown, where businesses are jumping on board and renovating their own buildings. A symbol of that connection between the waterway and downtown is Chihuly Bridge of Glass, a 500-foot pedestrian bridge linking Washington State History Museum, Tacoma Art Museum, Union Station, University of Washington-Tacoma and downtown with the Foss and Museum of Glass. Foss Waterway Seaport near the mouth of the waterway also has undergone a $6 million renovation.

“The Foss is clearly being looked at now as the stimulus our downtown needed,” said Bart Alford, a planner with the city of Tacoma. “This whole synergy of development is taking place.”

The Thea Foss Waterway Brownfield Revitalization Project is among 10 projects nationwide to receive the 2007 Phoenix Award. Created in 1997, the Phoenix Awards honor individuals and groups working to solve the critical environmental issue of transforming abandoned industrial areas into productive new uses.

One Phoenix Award winner is selected annually from each of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 10 regions.

All winners were honored at the National Brownfields Conference in Detroit this week.

“It is definitely an honor,” said Mary Henley, cleanup project manager for the city. “We are very proud of the project and to be recognized.”

Thea Foss Waterway is a 1.5-mile inlet off Commencement Bay that runs along the downtown’s shoreline. More than 100 years ago, the waterway was an industrial area with numerous mills and marine activities and the terminus of Northern Pacific Railroad. The western side of the waterway gradually began to lose its traditional tenants, leaving a legacy of vacant buildings and contaminated properties. In 1981, EPA named three polluted “hot spots” in the waterway as part of a Superfund site; it was one of the most polluted waterways in the nation.

In the 1980s, local government leaders realized the city needed to step up and tackle this problem. In 1991, the city and Metro Parks purchased nearly 27 acres of property on the western side of the Foss for $6.8 million. The goal was to turn the shoreline into a residential, commercial and recreational area while erasing that stigma of contamination then associated with the Foss.

It has been a long haul but that stigma is gone, said Henley, a longtime Tacoma resident. “Tacoma is no longer the smelly place that you drive through on your way to Seattle.”

The award also represents the success the city has had in recapturing this contaminated area, Alford added. “It is kind of the culmination of all this hard work the city of Tacoma and the community have gone through.”

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