Seattle is known as the "Emerald City" because of all the trees here (it really is amazingly green). The entire state is known for its crunchy-granola-totally-out-there denizens. With that background, I was a bit surprised to hear the words "superfund site" in the paper this weekend.
Turns out one of the "up and coming" neighborhoods in rapidly expanding (inflating) Seattle is Georgetown. Georgetown is right next to the Seattle's only river, the Duwamish River. Which sounds quaint until you hear that the river is a superfund site.
That's right, folks. Despite our green reputation, Washington has an industrial chemical wasteland right in the city of Seattle as well as the nation's largest nuclear waste site (Hanford) left over from the Cold War weapons manufacturing.
Nice. Even in the Emerald City it appears that humans cannot live with nature without destroying it. (And I thought that was only an East Coast thing.)
I would love to see the port closed and merged with Tacoma, the Seattle waterfront turned into living and recreation areas and the Duwamish River restored. It would be nice to see some environmental leadership from my home town but it appears our reputation on being green is less from conscious leadership and more from the lack of people moving here.
Read more about it: here.
