There’s a new warning sign up at Boulevard Park. So, what’s really up – or down – with that closure?

City officials have posted further information about a waterfront closure at Boulevard Park, citing contamination from industry decades ago in addition to hazards caused by erosion from winter storms.

The closure also caused a short detour along the popular South Bay Trail connecting downtown Bellingham and Fairhaven, temporarily forcing pedestrians and cyclists a few feet off the shoreline route through the park. But officials said they are more worried that people could be injured by falling on storm debris than by exposure to chemicals from a gasworks that operated at the site from the 1890s to the 1950s, before it was one of the city’s most popular parks.

“It’s been under investigation for many years,” said Gina Gobo Austin, park project engineer for the City of Bellingham. “We had some erosion lately, so we put up the signs.”

Fierce winds and a high tide caused some shoreline erosion in mid-February, and about 100 feet of trail was closed near an old wooden boardwalk and pier on the north side of the park. A more extensive closure affects about 150 feet of waterfront, as officials warned last week of chemical contamination “from previous industrial uses,” mostly hydrocarbons and petroleum by-products from the defunct South State Street Manufactured Gas Plant, which made home heating and cooking fuel from coal. The plant encompassed 6 acres on the north end of what is now Boulevard Park, according to historical records at the state Department of Ecology, which is supervising the city cleanup efforts.

Ecology’s website said Bellingham Bay Gas Co., which was a forerunner of Puget Sound Energy, was the gasworks’ first operator, and Cascade Natural Gas bought and continued to run the plant in the 1950s. Residential developers bought the site in the 1960s and the City of Bellingham acquired most of the property for parkland in 1975. The state and BNSF Railway Co. also own portions of the area.

“This past winter, one of the storms did a number on the pier,” said John Guenther, Ecology’s project manager. “It presented a safety issue. As a matter of being transparent, we wanted to make sure that people know that it is a cleanup site and it is not safe. Mostly, it is just (storm) debris and not contaminated soil. That pier structure, it’s a life-safety issue.”

Guenther said he inspected the site recently and found no evidence of contamination.

“Do not walk, wade or swim near this portion of the shoreline,” a sign posted at the site warns.

City officials have been sampling and analyzing soil in the area for several years, and should have a report completed by the end of this year, Guenther said. He said once the report is complete, officials will decide how the cleanup should be addressed. Future of the pier and boardwalk was unknown, he said.

Cost is uncertain, and will depend on the type of cleanup that will be required. Guenther said it could be simply covering the exposed contaminants with clean soil, as was done in the 1970s when the site became a park.

“It could range between $1 million and $10 million,” Guenther said, noting the costs will be split between the City of Bellingham and PSE, with Ecology providing a 50 percent matching grant.

Both Guenther and Austin said the cordoned-off area of the park is unrelated to two other projects at Boulevard Park, including repair of a pedestrian railway crossing and a raised walkway over the water – similar to the one at the end of Taylor Street – to connect Boulevard Park with the south end of Cornwall Avenue.

This story was originally published March 28, 2017 at 5:00 AM with the headline "There’s a new warning sign up at Boulevard Park. So, what’s really up – or down – with that closure?."