7215 S 196TH ST
The 13-acre Western Processing Company, Inc. site is located in the highly industrialized Kent Valley, about 20 miles south of Seattle and 2 miles north of the city center for Kent. The company originally reprocessed animal by-products and brewer's yeast, but the business expanded in the 1960s to include recycling, reclaiming, treating, and disposing of industrial wastes. These included electroplating wastes, waste acids (pickle liquor and battery acid), zinc dross and flue dust from steel mills, transformers, waste oils, pesticides, and spent solvents. From 1961 until 1983, about 300 businesses transported their industrial wastes to the Western Processing site. The company stored 72 bulk tanks and approximately 5,000 drums on the site property. The property also contained other containers, buried materials, open waste piles and 10 lagoons. In 1983, the company was permanently closed by federal court order. As of the 2000 census, 78 people lived within one mile of the site and 78,327 people lived within three miles of the site. The nearest drinking water well for the City of Kent (pop. 86,660) is located more than a mile from the site. This aquifer is much deeper than the contaminated aquifer at the site. Site Responsibility: This site is being addressed through federal, state, and potentially responsible parties' actions
25 |
People living within a 1 mile radius |
$75,987 |
Average Income |
11 |
Occupied homes |
No stories have been submitted for this site.