The Pulp Mills and the Poisoned Harbor

For most of the twentieth century the Port Angeles waterfront was an industrial zone. Large mills went up early in the twentieth century, and by midcentury several major operations lined the harbor, among them Crown Zellerbach, Fibreboard, Peninsula Plywood, and Rayonier. The Rayonier mill used an ammonia-based acid sulfite process to make specialty pulp that was incorporated into photographic film, high-impact plastics, synthetic leather, and eventually disposable diapers.

At its peak Rayonier was among the largest employers in the city. The mills brought wages and kept Port Angeles economically alive through the middle decades of the century. They also left a harbor full of poison.

Decades of industrial discharge deposited dioxins, furans, polychlorinated biphenyls, arsenic, lead, and petroleum compounds into the sediments of Port Angeles Harbor. Washington State identified the site as one of the most contaminated in the Puget Sound basin. Rayonier closed its mill in nineteen ninety-seven after more than six decades of operation.

Cleanup negotiations stretched on for years. Remediation work began in the two thousand tens and continued into the two thousand twenties. The old mill footprint sits largely vacant on the waterfront.

The harbor that nourished Klallam fishermen for thousands of years before the mills arrived is slowly being cleaned. The work is expensive and difficult, and the timeline keeps moving, but the sediments are gradually less toxic than they were.