EPA blasts shipyard retest plan
Letters to Navy demand changes in study of possible radioactive soil at S.F. Superfund site
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has excoriated the Navy’s plan to retest part of the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard for radioactivity as inadequate and unscientific, threatening to pursue a rare dispute process if changes aren’t made, according to letters obtained by The Chronicle.
“Without the requested changes, the approach will not provide the necessary confidence level to establish when Parcel G would be suitable for redevelopment,” Angeles Herrera, assistant director of the EPA’s Superfund Division, wrote to the Navy on Tuesday, referencing another letter the EPA sent to the Navy in March that raised many of the same concerns.
The letters are significant because for the first time they articulate the tension between the EPA and the Navy over the extent of the problems associated with the shipyard cleanup and how to go about making the site safe.
The Navy owns the 500-acre shipyard, which is a Superfund site heavily contaminated with toxic materials that include
heavy metals, asbestos and radioactivity. The EPA oversees the cleanup, which has been ongoing for more than two decades.
The dispute over retesting the property comes after a year in which state and federal agencies accused Tetra Tech, an environmental engineering company that was paid $280 million for its role in the cleanup, of faking thousands of soil samples across multiple parcels to speed up the work. Two Tetra Tech supervisors pleaded guilty to fraud and were sentenced to federal prison. Tetra Tech has stood by its work and contends that any wrongdoing was limited to a “cabal” of rogue employees.
The scandal has stalled the Bay Area’s largest redevelopment project, which is scheduled to eventually include more than 12,000 homes, 300 acres of parkland, three schools, and millions of square feet of space dedicated to retail, office and research and development. Development of new housing at the shipyard started in 2014 and so far about 450 homes are completed or under construction in an area known as Parcel A.
The Navy now plans to retest multiple portions of the shipyard, starting with Parcel G, a 40-acre, rectangular piece of land just south of Parcel A.
But in Tuesday’s letter, Herrera suggested that the Navy’s “work plan” for retesting Parcel G was too cursory and contended that it did not reflect recommendations made by both the EPA and the California Department of Public Health.
If any contamination is found in the first stage of retesting, the Navy’s current plan “would no longer be sufficient by itself to demonstrate protection of human health and the environment,” Herrera wrote.
According to the EPA, the Navy’s planned surveys may miss critical radioactivity issues and they may have to take more samples than proposed to make any reliable conclusions about safety. The EPA also urged the Navy to explain things more clearly to the public as “the next draft of the Work Plan will receive a great deal of attention.”
While community members had criticized the cleanup for years, the allegations gained more attention in January when the Navy issued a preliminary report compiled by five outside consultants who concluded that nearly half of the data Tetra Tech collected from the Superfund site were flawed.
That data include samples collected mostly between 2006 and 2012 from 300,000 cubic yards of soil, 20 buildings, 30 former building sites and 28 miles of storm drains. Then in April, an environmental watchdog group released a letter written by John Chesnutt, manager of the EPA’s local Superfund Division, which stated that as much as 97 percent of Tetra Tech’s cleanup data from Parcels G and B were suspect and should be retested. Tetra Tech has disputed that analysis. A Tetra Tech spokesman declined to comment on the dispute over the cleanup plan.
The retesting is expected to delay redevelopment of the shipyard by at least a year.
On Friday, others who have voiced concerns about the Navy’s retesting plan said they hope the agency heeds the EPA’s warnings.
“The Navy seems to be intent on going full speed ahead, and damn the torpedoes, on a retesting plan,” said Daniel Hirsch, retired director of the Environmental and Nuclear Policy Program at UC Santa Cruz. “Even as its sister agencies are shouting that you aren’t doing this right, the public will not be protected if you continue on this path.”
Shipyard resident Linda Parker Pennington said, “If the EPA thinks it should be more rigorous, then of course the Navy should follow their lead.
“The EPA has a more objective approach to the issue — I’m not sure why the Navy is unwilling to listen,” said Pennington, who lives in Parcel A, the part of the site that has been developed and is occupied by residents.
A Navy spokesman referred questions to a statement on its website, which specifies the Navy is evaluating whether to incorporate the public comments into its work plan and is “committed to conducting 100 percent of needed remediation if remaining contamination is found.”
The Navy’s plan calls for independent contractors to gather “new radiological data” at Parcel G by evaluating former sanitary sewer and storm drain trenches, as well as a portion of the property previously identified as having possible radiological contamination. It also calls for scanning six buildings “identified as radiologically impacted according to historical use,” the Navy said.
The Navy said the new soil data would be “analyzed at approved off-site laboratories to determine if it meets cleanup objectives. If results do not meet the cleanup objectives, the samples will go through an additional radiological assessment.”
Supervisor Malia Cohen, whose district includes the shipyard, said she has “made clear to the U.S. Navy that we cannot accept their positions at face value moving forward.”
“I don’t claim to be a scientist, but in the interest of public safety I am pressing for the Navy to consider the EPA’s comments and work to establish a viable threshold to ensure that the land being tested is not radioactive and the new contractor doing the testing is not making mistakes and covering up bad behavior,” Cohen said.
If the EPA’s proposed changes are not included, the agency may push the Navy into an interagency dispute process to force resolution. That process can further delay cleanup work and is invoked only when an agreement cannot be reached informally.