San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Hunters Point and Building 606: A toxic history
In its heyday, the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard was a mighty economic engine driving jobs to the Bay Area, and for the past quarter century, the city has been trying to bring it back to life. But radioactive and chemical contaminants in the shipyard’s soil have
FALLOUT
In 1946, the U.S. military detonated two atomic bombs in the Pacific Ocean to study the effects of radiation on a fleet of nearly 100 ships, some loaded with live pigs and sheep. The ships became so radioactive they couldn’t be used. Pigs keeled over and died. The most heavily contaminated ships were brought back to the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco.
HUSSEY ST.
THE FIRE
H ST.
I ST. The Navy and the city told police that Building 606 was safe. But sometimes police officers questioned these assurances, as in 2000 when the toxic landfill 2,000 feet away caught fire and began spewing multicolored smoke. The fire smoldered for a month. A federal health agency later concluded that it could have caused “shortterm adverse health effects” but no long-term damage.
RADLAB
The contaminated ships were pulled into the dry docks at the shipyard and examined by the Navy’s radiation research group, first known as the RADLAB. The scientists were centered in a cluster of numbered buildings beginning with the number 5. These “500-series” buildings included “hot” chemistry and biology labs, kennels for animals given lethal doses of radiation, and storage for radioactive waste and fuel oil.
CONTAMINATION
The 1940s and ’50s were a more lenient era, safetywise. The Navy discarded thousands of glow-in-the-dark dials that had been painted with radium-226, a powerful radiation emitter. A toxic landfill known as IR-02, 800 feet from the future site of Building 606, contained about 2,750 radioactive radium dials, according to one estimate, and the Navy also dumped waste in a second landfill 2,000 feet away, called IR-01/21. Spills of radioactive materials were not uncommon. don’t necessarily eliminate them.
As soon as it was completed, 606 was no longer needed. The battleship wasn’t coming to San Francisco, after all. The building sat vacant until 1991, when it was briefly pressed into service as a military post office during Operation Desert Storm. Then it emptied again until 1994, when a film company subleased it temporarily as a soundstage for the children’s movie “James and the Giant Peach.”
The film crew entered, the stop-motion models were shot, the peach ascended into a cartoon-blue sky, and again 606 was abandoned, another shell in a ghost town.
The city of San Francisco saw an opportunity.
A list of vacant shipyard buildings started to circulate through San Francisco city offices in 1994.
For city officials, especially 507: Radiological laboratory proved difficult to remove. A massive cleanup effort has consumed more than $1 billion and still isn’t done. The Navy now plans to retest much of the land for radioactivity, amid a scandal over faked soil samples.
Animal experimentation; storage for radioactive waste and fuel oil
Animal irradiation studies
529: Underground isotope storage vault and neutron generator
San Francisco Bay
BUILDING 503
Building 503 sat at the northern end of the “500 series.” It was originally a kitchen and mess hall, but after the A-bomb tests the Navy transformed part of it into a “Radioactive Laundry” to wash contaminated clothing. Each wash cycle at the facility could flush more than 100 gallons of wastewater through the pipes and drains. The Navy later demolished it.
RADIOACTIVE
In 2002 and 2003, radiation technicians found elevated levels of radioactivity in the soil footprints of demolished “500-series” buildings, raising the possibility of wider problems. The Navy decided that more investigations were needed, but didn’t do them right away. For the next eight years, the soil surrounding the police building remained a radiological question mark, and when the probe was finally performed, in 2011, it was done by a Navy contractor whose work practices are now in question. soon-to-be-mayor Willie Brown, the list was like a treasure map. They had dreamed of developing the shipyard, of transforming the desolate, windblown acres into houses, businesses and new streams of tax revenue.
It would help grow the city and the surrounding neighborhood, Bayview-Hunters Point, a historically black community with high rates of poverty, asthma and other health problems. Residents had long been concerned about the toxic acres next door.
“The investment opportunity here represents something that’s unique in America,” Brown would later say at the groundbreaking ceremony for the first housing development on shipyard land. “There is no other piece of soil as potentially lucrative and profitable for the public sector and private sector.”
Brown is a principal at an investment fund that raises
ST. HUSSEY
JST.
BUILDING 606
In 1989, the Navy removed some of the old soil from the Radioactive Laundry, constructed a concrete-lined crawl space, and put a large steel building on that spot: Building 606. San Francisco leased Building 606 from the Navy in 1996 and began moving police officers into the building the next year. Despite the radioactive history of the site, the original lease documents stated that “no radiological hazards are expected.” The Navy also didn’t mention that a Radioactive Laundry had operated on the land where Building 606 sits, describing the former structure as “Ship’s Subsistence and Laundry.”
NEW HOUSING
Up the hill from
Building 606 is an area known as
Parcel A, which was transferred to the city in
2004.
Hundreds of homes have since been built on the land, and thousands more are planned. Because of concerns raised by whistle-blowers and homeowners, a state agency is now re-scanning the area for radioactivity. On July 24, homeowners sued the developer and the Navy contractor, alleging fraud and negligence. The developer and contractor have denied wrongdoing. money for the site’s master developer, Lennar/FivePoint; a former Brown adviser who worked on shipyard leases, Kofi Bonner, is FivePoint’s co-chief operating officer.
In the beginning, no one knew how much the shipyard would cost to clean up, or how long it would take, but everyone was in a hurry to get started. The city wanted to develop the land. The Navy wanted to be rid of it. And Brown, who took over the mayor’s office in 1996, wanted a legacy.
To the city, leasing some of the shipyard’s empty buildings seemed like a logical first step, and it had a perfect tenant in mind: the Police Department. At the time, its Tactical Division was spread across four city locations, decreasing its effectiveness. The city priced the monthly rents for buildings of similar size: $275,052 for a warehouse next to Candlestick Park, $138,000 for space on
South Basin
Parcel A Harbor Bay Island in Alameda. In contrast, Building 606 would cost a mere $18,000.
On Feb. 13, 1996, Brown appeared at Building 606 with Navy officials, announcing the deal: The city’s development agency would lease 606 and two additional buildings at Hunters Point, subleasing 606 to the Police Department. Brown hailed it as a first step in bringing life back to the shipyard.
“The sooner the Navy gets out of town, the better,” Brown joked.
On Wednesday, Brown, who writes a column for The Chronicle, said police leadership pushed for the site and he supported the idea: “My capable police chiefs at the time recommended using that site, and I approved it. We were working with the information we had at the time.”
Brown said he couldn’t recall specifics behind the move to the shipyard. But city documents from 1996 suggest he played an active role and was a driving force behind it. A city development specialist referred to “the Mayor’s desire to place the Field Operations Bureau of the Police Department in Building 606,” and a police captain “said he thought the Mayor wanted the SFPD out there long term.” When Brown and others pitched the 606 deal to the public, the focus was on the promise of economic development, not the health and environmental challenges of running a busy office at a Superfund site. In documents required by federal law, however, the Navy and EPA had been taking an inventory of toxic material.
At Superfund sites authorities set “cleanup goals,” acceptable levels of different contaminants based on the cancer risk posed to humans living or working on the site. In the early 1990s, the Navy found substances in the soil around Building 606 at elevated levels
Good to go
requiring cleanup, including heavy metals like lead that can cause brain damage and industrial chemicals like benzene. To the west lay two toxic areas: a waste dump 800 feet away, containing about 2,750 radioactive radium dials, according to one city estimate, and a landfill farther north that was full of hazardous chemicals from a shiprepair company.
As early as 1993, the Navy also knew there were serious problems with lead and copper in the drinking water supplied to shipyard buildings. The water was corrosive to pipes, leaching lead into the water at unsafe levels.
Although the Navy listed some known hazards in lease documents for Building 606, the leasing process was built for speed. The original term of the lease was short, limited to a year and a half. The Navy concluded that a temporary police presence would cause “no significant impact” to human safety or the environment, which cleared the way for an abbreviated review of the site.
The Navy offered the building “as is” and included a few restrictions: The city had to put a fence around 606 and couldn’t dig in the soil without Navy approval. “Although contaminants may be present immediately outside and nearby Building 606, they are not accessible if proper precautions are followed,” the Navy wrote.
The site’s extensive radioactive history was summarized in a few brisk and misleading paragraphs. “No radiological hazards are expected.”
The Navy didn’t mention that a Radioactive Laundry had operated on the land where Building 606 sits. The Navy gave the former structure a more innocuous name, Ship’s Subsistence and Laundry, and wrote that it had no history of “the storage or use of hazardous materials.”
As for the lead and copper in drinking water, the Navy didn’t mention that either, although the sublease to the Police Department did point out the moral dangers of doing business with Northern Ireland or Myanmar, as required by city code.
The EPA signed off on the paperwork, the Board of Supervisors approved the lease, and the city prepared to move in — over the objections of the Police Officers Association. The city health department promised to monitor the cops’ well-being. An industrial hygienist would be assigned to Building 606 to keep the police informed about any risks posed by the evolving cleanup.
“Hazardous waste sites can contain many unknowns,” city health official Vickie Wells wrote in a letter to a police captain.
To reassure the police, the SFPD held a big meeting in January 1997. The Navy and Mayor Brown’s office sent representatives. The Navy told cops their area was clean.
“I was worried because I knew they did nuclear testing,” said Alexandria Brunner-Jones, a K-9 officer at Building 606 from 1997 to 2010. “They said, ‘No, we’ve done all the soil samples, it’s clean, you’re good to go.’ ”
At one point, according to several officers who were there, an officer asked the mayor’s aide: “If your kids were to attend school at that Superfund site in the shipyard, would you be OK with it?”
After a long pause, the aide replied, “Well, I can’t answer that question.”
“You just did,” the cop said.
From the main gate of the shipyard, it’s a mile to Building 606. Start at the top of the hill, on a 75-acre chunk of land known as Parcel A, where a private developer now sells milliondollar homes, and drive downhill into a grim plain of mostly derelict buildings that stretches to the bay.
Crows, wind, dirt, broken windows. Keep going south, toward the water, and one building stands out, an intact twostory structure with light-gray
In December 1997,
an industrial hygienist with the city health department warned of serious problems at Building 606 and the consequences of not addressing them.
When the Navy
leased Building 606 to the city, the Navy failed to mention that the structure was built on the site of a former “contaminated laundry” that had been used to wash radioactive clothing.
By 2004,
the Navy clarified that Building 606 had been built on the site of a former “contaminated laundry facility,” which raised the possibility of radioactivity in the soil beneath the police.
The U.S. military
set off two atomic bombs in 1946 during nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll, leading to startling levels of contamination, according to a secret cable sent to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington and later unearthed by the National Security Archive.
City officials consistently dismissed
the health concerns of police and civilians working in Building 606, telling them the building was safe. During a meeting of multiple agencies in 2002, a participant described the police employees in Building 606 as “paranoid,” according to handwritten notes of the meeting. Read more at www.sfchronicle.com/shipyard-documents. siding and four palm trees flanking the entrance: Building 606.
“We trusted that it was a safe area,” said Eddie St. Andre, 80, a retired SWAT officer. “That the city wouldn’t even allow us to go out there if it was a hazard.”
The cops didn’t know it when they moved in, but the building had been sitting dormant for six years, and the Navy hadn’t cleaned it. When the ventilation system was turned on, years of accumulated dust and other debris went coursing through the building.
The tap water tasted funny, too. Occupants complained of a greasy texture, an oily smell. The Police Department brought in bottled water, at a cost of $450 a month.
Cops started getting sick. A physician with UC San Francisco examined eight officers and documented dry coughs, eye irritation, rashes and headaches, as well as “dizziness, light headedness, tiredness, weakness, or irritability.” Mark Madsen, a former member of the Tactical Division who worked at 606 for 12 years, said he developed a rash across his stomach and groin. His doctor, stumped, gave him a topical cream for psoriasis.
At the time, a few officers tipped off reporters, hoping the city would rethink the move, but police commanders said it was too late to reverse course. Asked for comment, one Navy official suggested in a March 1997 article that the cops were lazy.
“I know the building is safe,” said Domenic Zigant, regional base-conversion manager for the Navy. “It appears the police officers don’t want the longer commute.”
In a July 1997 letter, four months after Zigant’s promise of safety, the Navy finally informed the city about high levels of lead and copper in the shipyard’s drinking water — a fact the Navy had known since 1993. The city fired back, “Why the delay in notification?” and asked if the Navy had told other shipyard tenants about the “long term lead problem.”
By that point, the city hygienist stationed at 606 was flagging a wide range of possible hazards, including the building’s tap water. Edward Ochi tracked the results of multiple tests in memos to health department leaders. In a June 1997 test of 606 ’s drinking water, petroleum compounds were found in every water sample; two months later, one sample tested positive for lead at 17 times the safe level, Ochi reported. The water also contained trihalomethanes, chemicals that can cause heart and liver problems. Two years later, city officials were still struggling to fix the water, according to a 1999 email by the health department’s Vickie Wells. She wrote that it was the city’s problem to solve; the Navy wasn’t likely to be much help, “given the minimal amount of rent being paid.”
The hygienist Ochi also warned his bosses about “extremely poor” communication from the Navy, saying he and the police at 606 rarely knew where Navy contractors were going to be working. He shared an astonishing story: In fall 1997, Navy contractors working at the toxic landfill accidentally punched holes in buried cylinders of chlorine gas — a deadly substance that can dissolve lung tissue when inhaled. The incident happened the equivalent of a few city blocks away from 606, but the Navy didn’t tell the people in the building, who only heard about it later from a representative with a state water agency. Subsequent updates, Ochi said, came from a nearby sandwich shop.
“Failure to immediately and (adequately) address concerns regarding site hazards, both real and perceived will result in illnesses and human suffering, losses in productivity, and ongoing morale problems,” Ochi warned.
Asked about the memos, a health department spokeswoman said the city had acted on
‘Blue canaries’