UW Mount Baker Laundry cleanup site

Ecology will hold an open house in-person to discuss and collect feedback on multiple cleanup documents. Interpretation will be available in multiple languages.

We invite you to comment on documents for a cleanup at the UW Mount Baker Laundry cleanup site in Seattle. Past activities at the site caused petroleum and lead contamination in the soil. El Centro de la Raza and Mercy Housing Northwest are partnering to do the cleanup ahead of redeveloping the site as affordable family sized housing.

These documents are available on the UW Mount Baker Laundry webpage:

• Remedial investigation and feasibility study (RI/FS): describes the contamination and different options for cleaning it up.
• Cleanup action plan (CAP): describes what will be done to clean up contamination at this site. It includes a timeline. 
• Prospective purchaser consent decree (PPCD): A legal agreement that requires El Centro and Mercy  to clean up the site and protects them from liability for past contamination. 
• Public participation plan (PPP): a document that explains how people can participate in the cleanup process.
• State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) – Determination of Non-Significance: Our determination that the cleanup work is not likely to harm the environment.

Background

The site is in Seattle’s Rainier Valley next to the Mount Baker light rail station. The site is owned by the City of Seattle and currently includes a parking lot, a concrete slab, and one vacant building. The site has been used for a few different things over the past century. A home built around 1916 was removed by the mid-1900s. A bowling alley operated here from the 1950s to the early 1980s, and the University of Washington later used the building as a large laundry facility until 2009. Another building on the property housed several grocery and retail businesses before being demolished in 2025 to prepare for redevelopment.