Rebecca Ponzio | Maps |
Jon Jablonski | Overview |
Roxanne Kerani | Sites Covered |
Parcel Combination | |
Parcel Buffers | |
Treatment of Vague Source Data | |
Buffers Used for Analysis | |
Final Results |
![]() |
|
The Washington State Growth Management Act
(RCW 36.70) of 1990 created land use tools in order to manage growth throughout
the state. One of these tools is the Urban Growth Boundary, which defines
the urban space according to state population projections and then mandates |
![]() |
|
The data used in this project can be categorized into four basic groups: visual reference, hazardous waste sites, positive factors for residential development, and negative features preventing the remediation of hazardous waste sites. The visual reference layers included Kitsap County and city boundaries, and a Kitsap hydography file to define the bodies of water around the geographic area of interest. (see Overview Map above) These layers were used to orient us visually as we worked, and were not modified, except to exclude the areas in Kitsap County that were not included in this project. The municipalities included were Bremerton and Port Orchard. Hazard waste site data were obtained from the Washington State Department of Health (DOH) website and the Department of Ecology (DOE) website. There were four sets of hazardous waste data: Confirmed and Suspected Contaminated Sites (from Washington DNR), National Priorities List sites (Superfund sites designated by the federal EPA), Mtca (Model Toxics Control Act) sites, and TRI (Toxics Release Inventory). These sites were listed in three files by the DOH, dependent on various hazardous waste site classifications used by the Environmental Projection Agency (EPA). For example, the six sites in the National Priorities List file have been prioritized for superfund clean-up status by the EPA. These data were re-projected to Washington State Plane North, 1983 NAD, and only those sites falling into the project area were utilized. This operation was performed first by querying the underlying tables for Kitsap County, then visually selecting those within the Bremerton area. The data from the four resulting files were then merged into one hazardous waste site file, with a field added to retain the origin of each site.
|
![]() |
Parcel maps were obtained from Kitsap County and merged into one file. |
![]() |
The resulting file was unwieldy, therefore buffers were drawn around the hazardous waste sites in order to reduce the amount of parcel data stored. At this early stage (before we had decided many of our criteria), constructed a buffer larger than any we thought might be needed, and discarded the remaining data. | ![]() |
It was found that some sites were duplicated between files, although the geographic locations of the points were not exactly duplicated. After extensive discussion, it was decided to assume that the sites were in fact businesses with multiple sites, and contain more than one hazardous waste site. Therefore all sites were considered separately for reclamation, including those with the same site name. (see Al's Auto Body map below.) |
The project primarily considered features considered attractive for residential development. These included proximity to city and county parks, libraries, community centers, schools, and arterial roads (more attractive for the construction process than the future residents), and being within the urban growth boundary. Park, school, and arterial files did not require restructuring, with the exception of isolating parks, libraries, community centers from a file of county public facilities, and limiting the countywide information to include only parks, schools, and arterials in the Bremerton area. The current uses of the waste site parcels were also taken into consideration-with the idea that currently un- or under- used parcels were identifiable. Several characteristics of the areas surrounding hazardous waste sites were considered for their potential negative impact on maintaining these sites in their current locations. These included the proximity to shoreline and wetlands, and the possibility of future landslides. The shoreline, wetlands, and geohazards data did not require restructuring, except for clipping the data to include only those features that fell inside the study area. Interestingly, neither wetlands nor any geohazard (landslide areas) fell near enough the sites to be taken into account. Due to this situation, wetland and geohazard attributes did not end up being an adverse data component. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Several assumptions were made to complete this project. Perhaps most importantly, it was assumed that we could reclaim and develop any of these waste sites, except those essential for national defense. Sites that were excluded included the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, located in central Bremerton, and the Manchester Naval Fuel Depot, located in a narrow harbor to the northwest of Port Orchard. All other sites that may or may not be in current use were considered eligible for reclamation. The main reason for this assumption was the inability to do field work in order to determine each parcel's occupancy status. In order to identify vacant lots or parcels, we selected parcels which had assessed land value but no assessed building value from the parcel maps. We then assumed that these lots were vacant if they were not assigned a tax code of "exempt." Vacant parcels were considered attractive for development because of their potential to blight a neighborhood, and the reduced cost of redeveloping these parcels.
The overall process used to rank hazardous waste sites for reclamation was an overlay with weighted voting. The initial step of only including hazardous waste sites in the geographic area around Bremerton could also be considered an overlay, using exclusionary screening. Various features were assigned weights based on the project team's beliefs regarding which characteristics were least and most desirable for the reclamation and development process. Buffers were drawn around schools, parks, libraries, community centers and arterials as a positive ranking (those sites which were located within the buffer were more desirable). The buffers drawn around the geohazards and shoreline acted as a negative ranking (less desirable). A bonus point was given to vacant parcels, their vacancies' determined as described above. In addition, a bonus point was given to those sites listed on the National Priorities List (NPL) since these hazardous waste sites have already been prioritized for cleanup. The weights assigned to each site were then summed to calculate the final score for the overlay process. |
The hazardous wastes site identified as the "Old Bremerton Gasworks" had the highest ranking (a 10) when the overlay process was complete. This site is in close proximity to a school, is identified as a vacant parcel, is on the National Priorities List and is near the shoreline (?).. Two other sites had similar scores:the "Bremerton Air Disposal" site and "Loftus Bulk Plant" each ranking a 9. These sites had profiles similar to the "Old Bremerton Gasworks," except in their proximity to a school. Many of the sites with low scores seemed to be located in commercial or industrial areas and, away from the shoreline. These sites included landfills and auto-related businesses. |
One of the
limitations of these results is that the site locations were somewhat questionable,
given that two data files, containing similar site names, placed the sites
in inconsistent locations. This certainly influenced the results of the
project; some of these sites which shared names had varying scores dependent
on their location. This is an issue that would need to be resolved for future
work in this area (possibly through ground truthing). Additional data on
the current use of parcels, vacancy status and zoning would have contributed
to a more precise, and probably more useful, result. Information on the
zoning of parcels (for industry/residential…) would also have contributed
to the project. Currently, the project identifies sites for residential
development, but these sites may actually be located in areas that are zoned
for commercial or industrial use. This project was limited in scope. We
decided to only create a ranking system to identify sites most desirable
for redevelopment. An additional dimension would have been to identify sites
most desirable for remediation based on ecological reasons (proximity to
geohazards/shoreline). The limitations of our overlay were due primarily
on limited information and time factors. Your mileage may vary.
|