06:00 PM PDT on Friday, May 26, 2006

By GARY CHITTIM / KING 5 News

SEATTLE - Residents of one of Seattle's most contaminated neighborhoods are celebrating. The City Council has joined them in an effort to force the Port of Seattle to clean up a toxic blemish on their community.

A parking lot and a few buildings are all that's left of an old asphalt plant in Seattle's South Park neighborhood – on the surface anyway.

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Tests show there are underground levels of toxic PCB's 9,000 times the government's safe levels for residential areas.

The Port of Seattle's plan was to clean up this industrial site Duwamish riverside property, but still leave it far above safe residential levels.

"And no one could go in there, no one could work there regularly and that says a lot about this black hole of toxicity if people can't even go in there on a regular basis," said Joel Clement, a neighbor.

The Port of Seattle has already paid for crews to pave the once dirt roads around the site and excavate the contaminated yards and residents appreciate that.

"Yeah, that makes me happy, but I'll be more happy when the entire neighborhood's cleaned up," said Mike Flaherty.

So the neighbors formed a group and convinced City Council members – all of them – to support a complete cleanup.

"We want to make sure that the clean-up takes place in such a way that people can use this property in the future," said Richard Conlin, Seattle City Council member.

But the Port of Seattle owns the property and has an agreement with the EPA to clean it up only enough for their plan.

"Our plan has been to continue to use it for industrial uses. Whether or not that will change in the future, we can't say at this point," said Mick Schultz, Port Of Seattle spokesman.

That would mean storage or limited parking – not what neighbors have in mind.

"This area is going to be redeveloped into something more beautiful than it is now," said Charlie Cunnif, Environmental Council South Seattle.

And that's really where the city and the neighbors are coming from, because even though the plans now are to keep this area sealed off from the public and industrial, that may change, and if it does, they don't want to go through another cleanup.