State to test at S.F. shipyard
Method to be used in study questioned by experts
California health officials said Tuesday they will begin testing in July on the hilltop portion of the former Hunters Point Shipyard currently under development, a process state officials say should put to rest the fears that harmful levels of radioactive materials are buried among the burgeoning neighborhood’s handsome townhomes and grassy dog runs.
The California Department of Public Health told The Chronicle that the work, which is scheduled to be wrapped up in the fall, will “address the radiological health and safety of the environment” of the area known as Parcel A, where 450 homes are either completed or under construction. The Navy will pay for the work.
But experts and shipyard residents are already questioning whether the proposed method of testing — using sodium iodide detectors — will adequately determine whether the soil at Parcel A is clean.
Dan Hirsch, retired director of the Program on Environmental and Nuclear Policy at UC Santa Cruz, said that the “gamma radiation” scanners the state is proposing will not detect two of the most harmful isotopes found at the Hunters Point Superfund site, strontium-90 and plutonium-239.
While the sort of Geiger counter the state is planning on using can be helpful in determining whether some radioactive materials are present in the ground, actual soil samples need to be gathered
and analyzed in a lab to determine whether soil is truly clean, he said.
“It’ll be like walking around with a blindfold and saying, ‘I can’t see anything,’ ” he said. Sodium iodide detectors “are never used alone or instead of soil samples — unless you are trying to do a PR stunt for the press and the political figures.”
The plan to retest the property — site of the Bay Area’s largest redevelopment project — comes after a year in which both the Navy and the Environmental Protection Agency have called into question cleanup and soil testing work done by Tetra Tech, an environmental engineering firm that was paid more than $250 million to clean up the mothballed shipyard, which was home to the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory from 1946 to 1969.
Two former Tetra Tech supervisors, Justin Hubbard and Stephen Rolfe, have pleaded guilty to falsifying records in connection with the cleanup, swapping suspect soil with clean dirt to make it appear that areas were free of harmful radiation. Both were sentenced to eight months in prison. Reports released last year by the Navy and the EPA said that up to 97 percent of the soil samples taken in two areas of the shipyard site could not be trusted.
Tetra Tech has repeatedly said that the cleanup was done by the book and that any cheating was the work of two “rogue” employees.
Tetra Tech had little to do with Parcel A, beyond overseeing some remediation work at one building. And the Navy and the EPA have insisted that Parcel A is clean because it was mostly home to military housing barracks.
But historical records and some field technicians who worked on the shipyard have questioned whether the area is as clean as government officials have said. A lab building adjacent to the site at one point contained a room full of caged dogs given lethal doses of radiation, according to government reports, and at least one former Tetra Tech field worker said he detected high levels of radioactive materials on the edge of the parcel.
While the Navy had long insisted that Parcel A didn’t need to be tested, it relented after Supervisor Malia Cohen and neighborhood residents insisted that testing be done. A spokesman for shipyard property owner Lennar said the company also requested “that Parcel A be retested to assure our homeowners that the land is safe and we are pleased that it will now happen.”
On Friday, the Navy said it would provide some financial support as well as “guidance and expertise” on Parcel A, but would not take a lead in the retesting of that area.
“Federal and state regulators have repeatedly verified the safety of Parcel A, which was investigated, cleared and removed from the Superfund program in 1999 and EPA surveyed Parcel A before transfer to the city of San Francisco in 2004,” said Derek Robinson, a Navy environmental coordinator. “We support CDPH in their efforts to gather additional data to provide Parcel A homeowners with peace of mind.”
The controversy over the testing of the hilltop parcel comes just days after the Navy released a proposed plan for retesting Parcel G, a rectangular piece of land just to the south of Parcel A. The evaluation, which will delay the planned redevelopment of the former shipyard by at least a year, will include testing of former sanitary sewer and storm drain trenches, as well as other portions of the property previously identified as having possible radiological contamination. It will also involve the scanning of six buildings “identified as radiologically impacted according to historical use,” the Navy said.
While members of the public have 60 days to comment on the plan for Parcel G, no plan for the survey of Parcel A has been made public, and there is no formal public review process.
Shipyard resident Linda Parker-Pennington said that Parcel A should be a “priority” for checking for dangerous toxins. “I understand why they have been focusing on some of the other parcels because that is where Tetra Tech worked more extensively,” she said. “But I think they should make Parcel A a priority — people are living here. The homeowners have a bad taste in their mouths.”
She said that she is “not very happy” with the level of testing the state is proposing.
“It sounds like it’s more about expedience,” she said. “If the objective is to convince the people who live here that they are in a safe place, it doesn’t sound like this will accomplish that.”
Theo Ellington, a shipyard resident who is running for the Board of Supervisors, said the testing process “should be as public as possible.”
“We don’t want to streamline this for the sake of rubberstamping,” he said. “We want to make sure the soil is clean and held to the same standard as the rest of the site.”
Bradley Angel, executive director of the environmental watchdog group Greenaction, said that the scanning at Parcel A should happen, but should be done in conjunction with extensive soil sampling.
“Without (soil testing) it will prove nothing,” said Angel. “A survey that includes zero core samples will tell us nothing about what is underneath the homes where people live or underneath the pavement where kids play,” he said. “It is a bad joke.”
Angel said the state should release a detailed plan for the Parcel A tests. “The last thing we need right now is to add to the controversy,” he said. “Let’s hope the place is clean but let’s find out, and we can’t find out solely by scanning.”