Fireworks + Gas Works + Seattle = environmental lawsuit

In Seattle, a venerable fireworks show has become the subject of a legal dispute between locals and the city - and since this is Seattle, it's only to be expected that the dispute is over environmental impacts. But it's not the fireworks themselves at issue - it's the fact that the city holds the show in Gas Works Park, a remediated coal gasification plant.

I previously wrote about Gas Works Park back in 2007, when I joined a behind-the scenes tour with one of the original designers responsible for the remediation. You can see the photos I took of the majestic steampunk ruins of the plant here.

The interesting thing about this conflict is that on the one hand you have concerned citizens worried that large events at the park will disturb buried toxic sediments. (Which is understandable.) But on the other hand, you have a city that, along with various local groups, poured resources into saving the Gas Works and reclaiming the land around it as a public park - though from what I heard on my tour, it would probably have been easier both practically and politically to raze the plant and pave the whole contaminating site over or fence it off (indeed, the Gas Works structures themselves are still fenced off). And the fireworks have been held there for years - this is nothing new.

It seems to me that lawsuits like this probably make cities less likely to save blighted and contaminated industrial areas, because you can never get the contaminants in such a site down to zero. (In addition, the cynical side of me wonders whether the lawsuit has anything at all to do with locals in the neighborhoods around the park objecting to the estimated 40-55K people expected to attend this year's celebration, and the resulting snarled traffic and logistical snafus. I know - cynical.)

Of course, when cynicism and toxic chemicals meet the 4th of July, Stephen Colbert is inevitably going to be there waving the flag of sarcasm. Here's what he had to say:

Ah well. "Gas Works Park" was maybe not the most fortuitous choice of name.

Anyway, it's a quintessentially American conflict they have in Seattle this 4th of July: our expectation on the one hand that our federal and local governments clean up urban blight and reclaim it for urban communities, vs. our demand that they keep us safe from all possible dangers. I have sympathy for both sides, but I hope the celebrations do go on, as they have for the past few decades. Today they will. But this lawsuit still has to make its way through the courts, so next year? Who knows.

View a slideshow of the community fireworks show here - there are some stunning photos of fireworks over the floodlit Gas Works towards the end of the show.