| The 162 affordable units that King
County worked so hard to save at
Burien’s Lora Lake Apartments won’t be
re-rented to low-income families in April
as planned: The King County Housing
Authority said last week that environmental
tests show contamination at the
site from when it was an auto wrecking
yard in the 1950s, forcing the property’s
current owner, the Port of Seattle, to
conduct more testing and a voluntary
clean-up that will be overseen by the
state Department of Ecology.
The Port conducted the tests last July
when it started demolition on 72 of Lora
Lake’s 234 units to clear a buffer zone for
its new third runway at Sea Tac Airport. The
Port bought the property in 1998, but, in
the wake of lawsuits and delays with the
third runway project, it struck a deal in 1999
allowing the housing authority to manage
the complex.
Prior to the deal’s expiration last July,
the housing agency lobbied the Port and
the City of Burien, which had rezoned the
area to light industrial and hoped to attract
a big-box store, to allow it to buy and keep
the 162 units that weren’t in the buffer
zone, arguing it made no sense for the Port
to destroy the units in an area that’s rapidly
losing affordable housing. When that didn’t
work, the housing authority sued to take
the property by eminent domain, leading
to a court injunction and an eventual
settlement in which the Port agreed to sell
the 162 units to the housing agency — but
not before the Port retook possession of
the site and, in September, demolished the
72 uncontested units.
In such situations it’s standard practice
to conduct environmental and other site
tests, says Rhonda Rosenberg, a spokesperson
for the housing authority. The
results, which only recently came in, show
hazardous chemicals — dioxin and petroleum
hydrocarbons — in samples taken at
seven and 14 feet. She says the housing
authority does not believe its previous
tenants, who were evicted in June, would
have been exposed, as the contaminants
are believed to be sealed under Lora Lake’s
concrete-on-slab construction.
The housing agency had planned to rerent
the remaining units in April, but that’s
now on hold for an unspecified period pending
what additional tests show. “We don’t
know what we don’t know,” Rosenberg says.
“Right now it appears that the contaminants
are isolated underground, but we need to
verify they’re not mobile.” |
