The Old Navy Dump/Manchester Laboratory (USEPA/NOAA) site is located along the western shore of Clam Bay, which is an embayment west of Rich Passage in the Puget Sound. The site is approximately 1 ¼ miles north of Manchester, Washington. Federal ownership of this site started in 1898 with the U.S. Army. In 1924, the entire site was transferred to the U.S. Navy. From the 1940s to the 1960s, the Navy used the site primarily for construction, repair, maintenance, and storage of submarine nets and boats. The Navy also used the site for fire fighter training and as a dump for wastes generated at the site and from the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington. Portions of the site extended onto an adjacent State park, a Navy fuel supply depot, and the marine tidelands of Clam Bay. Clam Bay has been used primarily for recreational shellfishing and is also known to be used by the bald eagle and chinook salmon, federally-threatened species designated under the Endangered Species Act. The former fire fighter training activities contaminated soil with dioxins and petroleum hydrocarbons in an area that was subsequently called the “former fire fighter training area.†The dumping of approximately 70,000 cubic yards of demolition debris and industrial waste, including asbestos, into a former tidal lagoon caused contamination of soil, sediment, seep water, and shellfish in Clam Bay with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and/or metals. These areas were subsequently called the “landfill area and Clam Bay sediments.†In the early 1970s, EPA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) acquired portions of the property. The site is currently occupied by an EPA analytical laboratory and a NOAA fisheries research laboratory. Site Responsibility: This site is being addressed through federal actions.
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