Families in South Park and Georgetown are still warned not to eat most fish they catch from Seattle's only river, 25 years after the Lower Duwamish Waterway landed on the federal Superfund list.
The Trump administration's top environmental official in the Pacific Northwest says that wait is over. EPA Region 10 Administrator Emma Pokon called the Duwamish site "exhibit A" for the agency's new push to speed up Superfund cleanups nationwide, according to an interview on Seattle Red's Jason Rantz Show published Oct. 28.
"20 years is a long time, and that contamination just kind of sitting there and continuing to pose risk to the community is not what we want to see," Pokon said on the program.
The five-mile stretch of the Duwamish has served as Seattle's industrial corridor since the early 1900s. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has identified 41 hazardous substances in the river's sediment, including PCBs, arsenic and dioxins, according to the agency's March settlement announcement. Airplane manufacturing, timber operations, steel mills and chemical production all contributed to the contamination.
$668 million price tag
The EPA listed the waterway as a Superfund site in 2001. The original cleanup plan came in under $300 million, according to Seattle Red. A consent decree lodged in federal court in March 2026 now puts the cost at $668 million, with about $140 million covered by federal agencies and roughly $130 million from other responsible parties.
Boeing, the City of Seattle and King County agreed to design and carry out the in-water cleanup work under that settlement. The cleanup is expected to take at least another decade.
Crews began their third dredging season in October, pulling contaminated sediment laced with PCBs and other hazardous substances from the river bottom, according to Seattle Red. King County's Wastewater Treatment Division reported that crews are dredging and placing clean materials near the South Park Bridge, Duwamish Waterway Park and Duwamish River People's Park.
New Superfund initiative
In June, the EPA launched its Superfund Solutions Initiative to move contaminated sites out of prolonged study and into active cleanup. The initiative targets more than 1,340 sites on the Superfund National Priorities List.
Pokon pointed to the JH Baxter site in Oregon as a model. Region 10 unlocked money that a bureaucratic hold had kept on the shelf and started removal work years early, she said.
"This isn't additional funds being collected; it is money that exists already in the budget that Congress has appropriated," Pokon told listeners. "If we know we're going to do it, it's not likely it's going to get cheaper with time. So let's be real about it and get out there and do the work."
Whether the pledge translates into a shorter timeline for the Duwamish remains to be seen. No public response from the City of Seattle, King County or community groups in South Park and Georgetown appears in the record as of publication.
