State workers on Wednesday used a giant magnet to attract metallic debris from the former Occupy Olympia site at Heritage Park, part of an ongoing cleanup that has cost the state thousands of dollars.
Managing the camp, then fencing and cleaning the site near Capitol Lake after its eviction, has cost the state Department of Enterprise Services $24,000, spokesman Steve Valandra said.
“I expect that to go up,” he said. The figure doesn’t include the cost of rehabilitating the grass on the park’s lawn, which was seriously damaged during the two months the encampment existed.
Meanwhile, the Washington State Patrol is looking at a $123,100 bill for policing the park from its creation Oct. 15 to the time about 30 state troopers in riot gear cleared the camp, spokesman Bob Calkins said.
Calkins said $48,673 of that was overtime; $74,427 was for regular pay. He said some of the latter might have been time troopers would have used to patrol the area anyway, but some of it prevented them from patrolling elsewhere.
“For the most part, they were all regular workdays,” he said.
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