Irondale

The new park officially opened in January.  The toxic residues are cleaned up, much (but not all) of the historic structure is gone, and the beach has been given a fresh start.

Irondale:  November 2011

AERIAL VIEW

The foundation walls of the old beehive charcoal kilns were left in place.  They will gradually dismantle themselves, contributing to the lag of bricks and rubble on the low tide beach.  The rapid initial erosion of this beach will settle down as the grade eases and a berm re-establishes itself, within and between the semicircular kilns.

An originally unanticipated aspect of this project was the removal of a large volume of the fill on the site and the WDFW site immediately north (Chimacum Beach).  Now, instead of a 6' scarp of eroding fill, there is a smooth transition from the berm to the backshore.  This will give the beach more freedom to pick it's favorite line - there's already evidence that in some places it will end up waterward of the current line, in other places it will end up eroding the backshore a little.  But the nice thing is that it has been given room to make this choice.