There is a big problem going on in North SeaTac Park and city councilmember Pam Fernald is determined to have something done about it, even if it means her salary.

“It’s just not right; we know that stuff is there, it needs to get cleaned out. You know one needle in a park and somebody manages to step on it, wow that’s awful. But when we know all this stuff is down there and nobody is doing anything about it that’s wrong,” explained Fernald.

Since 2007 the councilmember has been the co-chairman of Neighbors Without Borders and every year on Earth Day the group of volunteers gathers up to clean up North SeaTac Park. Provided with garbage bags and grabbers two trucks are assigned by the city to haul whatever trash the group picks up.

“The first year we cleaned out I think it was something like four tons of trash, the very first year, and a lot of that was tires and big wooden spools, so heavy stuff…as the years have gone by the garbage that’s in there has changed. So fast forward to this year, it’s the worst we’ve ever seen it. More needles and signs of drug use than ever before, and tons of baggies,” she described.

Needles, bags, bottles, and what Fernald describes as “open latrines” along with literally tons of other miscellaneous garbage litters the south side of North SeaTac Park. The group has also lately been finding remains of “bottle bombs”, plastic water bottles filled with aluminum foil and cleaning agents that are highly dangerous to handle even after they have been detonated.

This year during the cleaning an accident involving Fernald seemed to perfectly punctuate the problem at the park: she was stuck by one of the needles they found.

“I bend down to pick up the first needle to put in the container, and I had on gloves and everything, so what happens to me is the end of the vacutainer that I grabbed actually had a needle in it and I didn’t see it. It went right in my finger and of course then the darn gloves helped hold it in there,” she described.

Nurses who were volunteering with the group told Fernald to head to the emergency room immediately. A report to an Infectious Disease specialist was submitted, five vials of blood were drawn, shots for hepatitis B and tetanus were administered, and in six months she is scheduled to return to the hospital to complete her shot series and be re-examined.

“It dawned on me ‘I think this is getting too dangerous for volunteers to do’” said Fernald.

During the April 28 SeaTac city council meeting Fernald presented a motion that would allocate $19, 622.40 from the Basra Development Agreement to clean up efforts at North SeaTac Park. The money was to be used to plant street trees along 156th and sweet gum trees on 188th. This motion was unanimously denied by the Mayor and other councilmembers.

After that motion was denied Fernald then presented a new motion offering up her annual salary of $12K to be put towards the cleaning the park.

“I felt desperate to keep this alive because they voted no on that one and I knew that it if I didn’t try and come up with something else it would be swept under the rug and lost. I meant it when I said it, I meant I would give my salary, I wasn’t just saying it to say something,” she explained.

According to Fernald Mayor Mia Gregerson quickly gabbled the meeting to a recess and all of the council gathered in another room to discuss how to proceed. It was at that point that City Manager Todd Cutts wrote out a statement for Fernald to read and be done with her motions.

“They wanted me to withdraw my motion to give up my salary and then they gave me something that the city manager wrote that they wanted me to read instead, and I kinda sorta did it,” she explained.
The day before the meeting Fernald had also approached the city manager about using a process called CPTED (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design) in which the tree limbs and brush in the south area of the park would be trimmed up to allow a clear line of sight for patrol officers. This was also denied.

“Bottom line to me is that the City of SeaTac is in violation of their own code enforcement ordinances,” she said with frustration.
As she explained money for cleanup usually goes toward Angle Lake improvements.

A discussion on the filth at the park is scheduled for the May 26 city council meeting. One issue that Fernald sees with the proposed discussion is laying the blame on the homeless community for the garbage problem in light of the recent protests in Burien.

“The reason I don’t make my focus homeless folks is because we have great human services in SeaTac…what I encountered was garbage that nobody handled, I didn’t need to make a complaint about the homeless,” she explained.

Fernald hopes that money will be found in the future to support cleaning the park but seems to view the probability of those funds as being very slight.

“They can’t understand why it’s gotten into this condition. I don’t want to make this an “us/them” thing, but I am the only councilmember who lives in that area. Even Barry [councilmember Ladenburg] said ‘if you hadn’t told us about it none of us would have known it’, it’s because they don’t come down here,” Fernald explained.