EPA Avoids Toxic Dust, Asbestos Issue at San Francisco Hunter’s Point Project
The Candlestick Point-Hunters Point Shipyard Phase II development was approved in a four-three split vote on June 21 by the San Francisco (California) Planning Commission and Redevelopment Agency.
The project began to take shape at the turn of this century. In 2004, the U.S. Navy transferred a parcel to the Redevelopment Agency. By 2006, earthmoving and grading activities created the outline of future development, which by 2023 is expected to provide more than 10,000 housing units on 700 acres of land.
The project has not been without difficulties. In 2006, the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) issued three violations to the developer, Lennar BVHP (Bayview-Hunters Point) LLC. In 2008, Lennar settled with the Bay Area Air
Quality Management District (BAAQMD), paying $515,000 in civil penalties for the company’s violations of California’s Health and Safety Code, Section 424.
Most of the complaints have devolved around the dust raised by earthmoving activities, and the fact that the Draft Environmental Impact Report, or DEIR, fails to “quantify and properly mitigate” this potentially toxic dust.
This failure to recognize a visible hazard is compared to the aftermath of 9/11, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA, a division of the U.S. Department of Labor) took samples of Ground Zero air (in downtown Manhattan) and reported no excessive levels of asbestos, lead or volatile organic compounds, even though both Towers were constructed in the late 1960s, during an era when asbestos was still widely used in many building materials.
In fact, a wet mixture of asbestos and cement was sprayed on both buildings as fire retardant – a practice banned by the New York City Council in 1971, but not before the Twin Towers were completed.
Moreover, the EPA has been accused of intimidating or squelching its own scientists when it comes to adverse environmental reporting. In the spring of 2008, for example, more than half of the 5,419 EPA scientists surveyed by the Union of Concerned Scientists admitted that political intervention from the White House altered the substance of their reports on climate change vis-à-vis power plant regulations.
In the case of 9/11, a 2004 report by the Sierra Club unmasked the conspiracy to conceal public health dangers as a plot engineered to keep Wall Street, the country’s financial locus, undamaged. The same thing has been found in the Hunter’s Point Project, where, in 2006, SFDPH director Dr. Mitch Katz issued a fact sheet showing that asbestos and other dangerous particulates in the dust had not reached “unsafe levels”.
This, even though the EPA (through its Office of Air and Radiation) admits that particulates at any level are a health risk, and those below 10 microns the greatest risk, though particulates in general cause increased hospital and ER visits, and more deaths from heart and lung disease, especially in warmer weather.
But it wasn’t until June 9, 2010, after considerable pressure from Bay Area environmentalists and health officials like Rick Kreutzer, MD, California Department of Public Health Environmental Health Investigations chief, that the SFDPH was forced to reconsider its initial claim, that exposures to naturally-occurring asbestos at low levels, and intermittently, was safe.
The EPA has also since admitted that its Hunter’s Point investigations did not actually address the issue of humans exposed to asbestos-laden dust separate from naturally occurring asbestos, as found in California’s state rock, serpentine, which is ubiquitous to both the Sierra Nevada and coastal mountain ranges.
In the Southeast San Francisco area, decades of contamination of air, water and soil (reportedly with more than 200 toxic chemicals, including asbestos) has led to documented rates of breast and cervical cancer that are double those found in other areas of the city. In addition, hospital admissions for diabetes, emphysema, congestive heart failure and hypertension are triple the statewide average.
Finally, and most damning, half of infant deaths in the city occur in the Bayview-Hunter’s Point and Potrero Hill neighborhoods, with birth defects 10 percent higher (as compared to San Francisco county) as well.
Many organizations, including the California Native Plant Association, the Golden Gate Audubon Society, San Francisco Tomorrow and the Sierra Club have filed recent appeals to force the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to reconsider the adequacy and effectiveness of the environmental review.
In addition, on June 2, the BAAQMD okayed new and stricter rules to regulate air quality violations; this is the first upgrade since 1999, and while not preventing further Hunter’s Point development, does place the onus on developers to protect the public by reducing toxic dust.
In spite of that, some charge, the EPA continues to display what can only be politically-influenced behavior in regard to Hunter’s Point – a bias which is evident in its June 9 report called “Review of Dust and Naturally Occurring Asbestos Control Measures and Air Monitoring at the Hunters Point Shipyard”, wherein the EPA maintains that safeguards to manage toxic dust are in place.
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