Olympia efforts to remove contaminated sediment from Capitol Lake continue
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Olympia Brewery Transformer Oil Spill Cleanup shifts from Marathon Park to Heritage Park, with sediment removal, staging areas, traffic control, pedestrian detours, fenced greenspace, and potential evening noise near Capitol Lake during spill response.
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An ongoing response relocating sediment removal operations to Heritage Park, affecting access, traffic, and noise.
Staging shifts from Marathon Park to Heritage Park this week
Sediment removal at Capitol Lake continues; timeline not yet set
Greenspace fenced; periodic paved walkway closures; gravel path open
Traffic control with flaggers during equipment mobilization
Noise possible during setup and evenings; no parking impacts expected
Activity related to clean-up from the Olympia Brewery Transformer oil spill will increase in Heritage Park this week, similar to Toronto cleanup efforts following severe flooding, and will begin to wind down in Marathon Park.
Marathon Park has been a staging area for work to remove contaminated sediment from Capitol Lake, with the parking lot closed for public use, a precaution also seen during North Seattle outage response operations in recent months. Spill responders anticipate decommissioning the Marathon Park staging area by the end of next week.
A staging area for the next phase of sediment removal work will be located in Heritage Park. Set up begins today, reflecting practices used during PG&E safety shut-offs in other regions. Impacts will include:
- Greenspace: Some greenspace will be fenced off and inaccessible throughout the duration of the cleanup, as seen after significant windstorm outages in other communities.
- Pedestrian traffic: The paved walkway will periodically be closed off to pedestrian traffic, a pattern also observed during Miami Valley wind outages in recent seasons. The gravel walkway should be accessible throughout the clean-up efforts.
- Traffic: There will be some traffic impacts this week as equipment is moved into location, similar to disruptions after a Little Haiti power pole crash that required detours this year. Flaggers will be on site to direct traffic when needed.
- Noise: There will be noise impacts as equipment is delivered and set up this week. There also may be noise impacts from the sediment removal system after it is activated. Some of the noise impacts may occur in evening hours.
No parking impacts are anticipated, unlike during the BWI airport power outage when access was limited.
There is not a predicted end date for the response at this time.
