Mary Martin is getting a new yard.

Last week, Martin looked out her kitchen window at a large excavator and explained how just days before, contractors had staked out the yard outside her modest Maury Island home and  carefully scraped off a foot of topsoil. They left behind a giant mound of dirt and a wide hole to be filled and topped with sod.

“It’s a huge project” said Martin, who sat on her porch one day to watch the work. “Not something a regular homeowner could do at their home very easily.”

Martin and her husband are among some of the first on the island to get new yards as part of the state Department of Ecology’s (DOE) neighborhood-by-neighborhood effort to find and remove arsenic-laced soil in the areas most contaminated by the historic Asarco plume. Soil testing will continue, and in the coming year around 40 properties on the southern ends of Vashon and Maury islands are expected to get publicly-funded yard cleanups.

State funding for the massive cleanup comes from 2005 a settlement with Asarco. The state received $188 million in settlement funds and expects to spend about $64 million of that on its yard testing and cleanup program, which is also being carried out in north Tacoma.

“If people were skeptical, they might go for it after the cleanups start,” said Amy Hargrove, a coordinator with DOE’s Yard Cleanup Program.

Last year, DOE began a large effort to sample more than 700 properties on the southern ends of Vashon and Maury islands for arsenic and lead that settled in the soil during the 100 years that Asarco’s copper smelter operated in the Ruston area of Tacoma. Properties with the highest levels of contaminants — over 100 parts per million of arsenic or 500 parts per million of lead — can receive free yard cleanups, as the contaminants are believed to pose a health risk.

DOE offered sampling to 807 Vashon property owners, and about 740 responded. So far, 615 homeowners have had testing done in areas of their property that are frequently used — yards, footpaths, gardens or playgrounds.

“We’re doing it in areas where people spend the most time, where they grow vegetables, where kids play,” Hargrove said.

The state has found that contaminant levels aren’t quite as high as once thought on Vashon, where it was expected about 100 properties would qualify for cleanup. So far, 30 properties are lined up for yard cleanups, and Hargrove expects at least 10 more will be added. Far more work is happening in Tacoma, where more than 1,000 yards will see work before the project is over.

Debby Duchan, who owns a 5-acre property on southern Maury, had her property tested and found that a large swath of her back yard had high levels of arsenic. She said she isn’t concerned about the health risk of the contamination as much as her home’s resale value.

Last week, contractors began digging up a 6,000-square-foot area of Duchan’s yard, carefully avoiding a few small apple trees with deer fence around them.

“At some point, 10 or 20 years from now, we’ll want to sell the place and we’ll be able to say we had it tested and had it cleaned up where we needed to,” Duchan said.

While no local health trends have been tied to the Asarco contamination, Hargrove said the state takes the issue seriously and uses conservative data to estimate risk. Long-term exposure to arsenic and lead by breathing or swallowing is known to increase the risk for certain types of cancer, heart disease, diabetes and other chronic health problems. Officials believe the risk would be highest for those who are frequently exposed to and ingest soil, primarily children. Experts estimate that being exposed to soil with 100 parts per million of arsenic on a frequent, long-term basis may increase cancer risk by 150 in 1 million, meaning that in a population of 1 million people, there may be 150 cases above the normal cancer rate.

“Arsenic is a cancer risk,” Hargrove said. “It’s not an immediate threat, but it is long-term exposure that is a concern.”

Each yard cleanup will take two to three weeks to complete, and will cost the state about $50,000. The Vashon cleanups were bid out as one public works job, which was awarded to Anderson Environmental Contracting, a Kelso-based company that is certified to handle hazardous materials. Soil is managed carefully at the work sites and covered with plastic until it can be trucked off the north-end ferry to a landfill in the Seattle area. Any plants that are uprooted in the process, with the exception of large bushes or trees that contractors can work work around, will be replaced, as will any landscaping.

“We try to leave them with what they had,” Hargrove said.

Jim Sundholm, who also lives on Maury, said he’s known about the Asarco contamination for years and jumped on the chance to get his property, which has a home built before 1922, tested. It’s believed that homes built before the Asarco smelter cshut down in 1986 likely have greater contamination because the soil has been less disturbed.

“You sit in Sporty’s or the Red Bike and talk with a friend over a cup of coffee about this problem,” Sundholm said. “I’ve talked about it for 20 years.”

When Sundholm learned his yard did have high levels of contaminants, he and his wife weren’t concerned, he said, but decided to have the cleanup done as a precaution.

“I wasted a bunch of coffee if I’m not going to take the opportunity to fix it,” he said. “As my wife and I talked about it, we said we’d be ashamed of ourselves if we … said no and something happened to others or ourselves.”

Coco and Brennan Banks were also aware of the Asarco contamination when they purchased their home on Maury Island in 2012. Before the sale went through, they had the yard tested by a private company that found contaminants, but not at levels high enough to raise alarm. With two young children, they hoped they still may be eligible for a free yard cleanup, but testing by the state found arsenic and lead levels not quite high enough to qualify.

“I’ve got two young children. I want zero levels of arsenic,” Coco said.

Since moving, however, the couple has been careful to follow the state’s recommendations for living with contaminated soil. They’ve covered exposed dirt in their yard with wood chips or rocks, and their children wear shoes in the yard and wash their hands after playing outside.

“We basically did a lot of research and looking into it and came up with ways of managing the risk,” Brennan said.

Hargrove said she knows there are some people who would like yard cleanups, but simply don’t have levels high enough to qualify. Preschools throughout the island were a priority for the state and were tested and cleaned up several years ago, along with Dockton Park, which has one of the island’s only public playgrounds.

Likewise, some people have opted not to get tested at all, and a couple people who qualified for cleanups ultimately declined them.

“It’s a big disturbance,” Hargrove said, “but they have the information, which is good.”