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[JAMES RASMUSSEN] Today we're doing a tour on the Duwamish River
on the Admiral Jack.
The Admiral Jack is a marine high school boat
that they use for educational purposes.
Today is a community tour.
This used to be one of the largest mudflats
on the West Coast.
People that are coming from the community
actually get a chance to see the river from the river,
and that's the best way to see the river.
[ Bald eagle caws ]
It was one of the richest places,
as far as wildlife was concerned,
anywhere around.
It was one of the largest mudflats on the West Coast.
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This river is basically named for the tribe
because this was our place...
...and the very beginnings of the city of Seattle.
The mudflat was worthless to the settlers.
They started filling in the mudflats
with anything they could find,
everything from Yesler's Mill to all the sawdust
and everything went out into the bay.
Even rubble from the San Francisco earthquake.
This river has been straightened.
It's right now is five miles.
It used to be 15 miles.
The meanders that a normal river would have,
you'll see some of those here.
The old river, the way that it used to be.
So what we're coming up to is what's called Duwamish Diagonal.
Duwamish Diagonal is a combined sewer overflow,
drains 30 square miles all the way up to I-90
all the way down to Lake Washington.
As soon as they started dredging here,
all of that contaminated mud went up and down the river.
If there wasn't a place
that wasn't contaminated on the river,
it probably got contaminated from this early action area.
This was designated a Superfund site in 2001
from just beyond the Turning Basin
all the way up to Harbor Island.
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What we're coming up to now
is previously known as T-107 Park,
but now it's known as "Hah-ah-poos",
which is the Indian name for this -- for this place.
This place had a lumberyard that did creosote.
A very polluted area back here.
The lumberyard has been completely cleaned up
and now is actually an intertidal habitat.
This is part of the mudflat that you can see right out here.
And that's the only remaining part of the old mudflat.
This place is one of the most important salmon habitats
that we have on the Duwamish River
because it's the old habitat, not new habitat.
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So more cement companies.
We have many, many cement companies here.
They have their problems, but in most cases,
they're better now than they were before.
This is the First Avenue Street Bridge.
That's an all-purpose grater,
'cause you can put a school bus into that thing
and it comes out in little pieces.
-No way. Wow.
-When it rains here,
a lot of that just comes right into the water.
We have to have source control sufficiency
to be able to do the cleanup.
Kicking and screaming, they'll come along,
I can guarantee you that, 'cause they have to.
Boeing Plant 2 --
You can see the habitat that they've redone here.
Innovative things that Boeing did on this site
of a series of four ponds that water goes through
and then is able to be brought into the river
as clean water.
Malarkey Asphalt was a very contaminated area.
Because of that, we now have this habitat site here.
This is the estuary.
This is where saltwater and freshwater meet.
We're still not seeing salmon increase here yet,
but we're not seeing them decrease, either.
This river is alive.
And when I first started here a long time ago,
it was -- it was not in good shape at all.
The process takes time to know where all the contamination is,
what is that contamination, and then go back
and check it to make sure we got things right.
That's what takes so long here.
Probably gonna take another 25 years
to get the rest of the cleanup done,
but every step in this process makes the river a better place.
And I hope that people take away that they are part of this,
that they can be part of this.
Just to understand it is the first big step.
And it's mostly a good story.
So much better than it was,
and it's only gonna get better.
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Watch CityStream, Tuesday nights at 7,
on the Seattle Channel,
or find us anytime online at seattlechannel.org.
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