Fish Habitat Restoration at Strandley-Manning Superfund Site

A Superfund site on south Puget Sound in Washington State, contaminated with PCBs and dioxins, has turned out to be a cleanup and restoration success thanks to the early cooperation of NOAA, EPA, and Seattle City Light. The Strandley-Manning Superfund site, located at the head of Burley Lagoon on south Puget Sound near Purdy, Washington, othewise represneted an environmental threat to several species of salmon.

From 1972 to 1983, the Strandley-Manning Superfund site was used for scrapping and salvaging electrical transformers, with metals recovered by burning the transformer cores. Not only were waste transformer oils containing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) stored in a leaky rail tank, they were burned for heat, used as hydraulic fluid in vehicles on site, and used as a dust suppressant on roads.  As a result, soil and sediment throughout the site were contaminated with PCB compounds, and some areas contained elevated concentrations of dioxins produced by the burning of PCBs.

Surface runoff and shallow groundwater from the site discharge to an on-site, spring-fed stream that flows into Burley Lagoon through shallow tidal creeks that meander through a saltmarsh. The Lagoon is habitat for a variety of estuarine fish and serves as a migration corridor for steelhead, salmon, and sea-run cutthroat trout.

Reintroduction of residnet trout into the restored stream.