A plume of black smoke stretched across South Seattle on Tuesday night as a fire burned on a barge of scrapped cars on the Duwamish River.

It was a dramatic sight, but pollution isn’t new to this part of the city, and now Seattle officials want to boost two of the neighborhoods that line the river, Georgetown and South Park.

Officials cite this statistic as a reason for a revamp: Life expectancy in South Park is 74. That's 13 years less than in wealthy, mostly white neighborhoods like Laurelhurst or Magnolia.

The reasons for the discrepancy aren't entirely clear, but city officials want to tackle two of the key suspects: pollution and poverty.

"South Park and Georgetown, the Duwamish valley, have really shouldered the burden of environmental injustice for decades," Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan told KUOW. “Those communities have suffered in ways that other parts of our city haven’t.”