Kite Hill Closed

While this is probably old news to pretty much everyone but me, Kite Hill, and most of the mid-section of Gas Works Park is closed, and will remain so until Memorial Day 2015. I mean, yeah, Lee posted about it on these very pages back in February, but somehow it didn’t sink in that this towering icon of our neighborhood would be off-limits for eight months.

So, yeah, Kite Hill is closed until May 2015. They’re replacing all of the topsoil with clean topsoil in advance of offshore sediment clean-up planned for the future. The issue is that there are still toxins in both the soil of Gas Works and in the off-shore floor of Lake Union left over from the era when Gas Works was, in fact, a gas works. According the city:

One of the issues associated with the sediment work is the potential recontamination of the remedy from outside source(s) including uncovered areas of the park where there may be contamination at the surface. By adding clean soil to Kite Hill the risk of recontamination of the sediment from the surface flow of storm water is minimized. Both Ecology and the federal Environmental Protection Agency are very supportive of this early action as we move towards the sediment remedy.

The city promises everything will be put back where they found it, except “the intermediate path on the south side of the hill,” which will be eliminated.

But…but…sledding!