March Point Landfill

A Puget Sound Initiative Site - Reaching the goal of a healthy, sustainable Puget Sound.

The March Point Landfill site, also called the Whitmarsh Landfill, operated from 1950 until 1973, first as an unregulated public dump and later as a county disposal area. Decades of household, commercial, and industrial solid wastes were discarded into a natural lagoon on the shore of Padilla Bay. From the late 1980s to mid-2011, a sawmill operated at the site generating wood waste up to ten feet thick over large portions of the landfill.

The March Point Landfill site is located next to a heron rookery, where great blue herons breed. Cleanup decisions will be made in consideration of the herons to minimize any impacts to their population.

In 2014 and 2015, approximately 44,000 cubic yards of wood waste debris was hauled off site and recycled as compost material. The former mill area buildings were demolished in late 2022 and the concrete foundations were broken up.

In 2017, Ecology completed a Remedial Investigation and Feasibility Study (RI/FS). These studies described the nature and extent of contamination at the site, evaluated risks the contamination poses to human health and the environment, and looked for cleanup options. 

The 2020 consent decree named Shell Oil Company., Texaco Inc., and Skagit County as the parties responsible for the cost of the cleanup. A Cleanup Action Plan (CAP) was developed in early 2020 to detail the upland cleanup alternative selected, the site use restrictions and monitoring requirements. 

The selected cleanup alternative, presented in the RI/FS, and detailed in the CAP was Alternative 3, which includes:

• Removing a portion of the existing landfill to accommodate right-of-way.
• Excavating and re-distributing some of the existing landfill cap and some existing solid waste in preparation for grading the site.
• Grading the site to allow for stormwater runoff.
• Constructing an impermeable cap over the site, made of layers of geotextile and bentonite clay. This prevents water from filtering through the solid waste in the landfill and carrying contaminants into Padilla Bay.
• Installing an enhanced geotextile membrane where the cap will encounter marine water.
• Placing three feet of gravel and soils over the geotextile membrane.
• Installing a system to collect landfill gas and passively vent it to the surface.
• Installing stormwater control and surface drainage systems.
• Restoring habitat along the site’s shoreline.
• During construction, wastewater and erosion will be managed in accordance with regulatory requirements. Disturbance of the nearby heron rookery will also be limited through techniques like noise reduction.

Remediation activities are scheduled to begin Spring 2025.