Navy Took 11 Months to Alert SF to Airborne Plutonium at Hunters Point Shipyard Site

San Francisco officials and advocates are raising alarms that the U.S. Navy failed to alert the public to high levels of airborne radioactive material detected almost a year ago at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.

According to a notice warning community groups in neighborhoods around the defunct base, the Navy notified the San Francisco Department of Public Health only this month about elevated levels of plutonium-239 found last November. Community groups and at least one San Francisco supervisor called the 11-month delay “unacceptable” and are demanding answers.

Plutonium-239 is a highly radioactive material used to create nuclear weapons and reactors. Breathing in tiny particles is dangerous and over time can cause issues including lung cancer, cellular damage and radiation sickness.

The Navy found the sample in an area known as Parcel C, adjacent to a hill covered in condo buildings where hundreds of families live and a public park in view of the shipyard.

The Navy had previously cleared that area for redevelopment two decades ago.

Dr. Susan Philip, San Francisco health officer, wrote to the Navy requesting all documentation related to the incident, all actions taken by the Navy and a year’s worth of air monitoring data for independent review by the Environmental Protection Agency and the California Department of Public Health.

“We share your deep concerns regarding the 11-month delay in communication from the Navy,” Philip wrote in the notice to community members. “We demand nothing short of full transparency and prompt communication from our federal partners and regulatory agencies to ensure your safety.”

The 866-acre Hunters Point site was home to a shipyard from 1945 to 1974 and the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory from 1948 to 1960.

By decontaminating ships after atomic bomb tests and other activities, the Navy contaminated shipyard soil and groundwater — as well as surface water and sediment in the San Francisco Bay — with radioactive chemicals, heavy metals and petroleum fuels. The base was declared one of the nation’s most contaminated sites in 1989.

The Navy did not respond to KQED’s request for comment.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency press officials, meanwhile, wrote in an email that the “one-time detection of plutonium” was analyzed twice by the Navy but was only found in one of the tests.

The Navy provided a summary to the EPA on Oct. 23 of this year. Officials wrote that the agency has requested all data used by the Navy so “our agency can verify the finding ourselves” and “determine what risk there is to the public.”

Thursday’s announcement is just the latest in a decades-long effort to clean up the contaminated site. In 2023, the Navy unearthed two radioactive objects there. Early last year, the Navy, for the first time, acknowledged what Bay Area climate scientists and residents had asked the agency to investigate for years: In just over a decade, potentially toxic groundwater could surface there, partly due to human-caused climate change.

Back in 2022, the San Francisco Civil Grand Jury issued a report alerting the public that groundwater rise — a result of sea levels rising in response to global emissions melting ice caps and expanding oceans — could have significant effects on the site in the coming decades.

The new finding raises fresh questions about the city’s plans to build thousands of homes amid an exceedingly complex and ongoing cleanup effort. When finished, the 693-acre Candlestick Point-Hunters Point Shipyard project — which the Superfund site is part of — could have more than 10,000 housing units.

The development would include two new waterfront neighborhoods with housing and retail, along with over 340 acres of parks and open space.

Lifelong Bayview-Hunters Point residents, like Arieann Harrison, said their concerns were affirmed by the Navy’s latest findings of radioactive material. Dr. Ahimsa Porter Sumchai tested Harrison as part of a larger study through her Hunters Point Biomonitoring Foundation to determine whether the Navy exposed Bayview-Hunters Point residents to contamination.

Harrison said her results included plutonium.

“I feel very validated,” Harrison said. “Now that those naysayers know that this is really a real thing, hopefully they’ll be at the front lines of being more tuned in to what’s actually happening in the community.”

She would like the city and federal agencies to review the Navy’s findings independently and, if necessary, sue the Navy for failing to promptly alert the public to the contamination.

“We have to safeguard our children, families and friends that are trying to carve out a life for themselves,” Harrison said. “We need to know that they are actually being held accountable for the residents that are here and even the new people that have moved here under the guise of being this fabulous new section of the community that’s going to be redeveloped.”

Supervisor Shamann Walton, whose district encompasses the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood, said the “lack of transparency” on the Navy’s part is “very problematic.”

“It’s definitely unacceptable that they took this long,” Walton said. “It’s not the first time that the Navy has done something that is unacceptable and demonstrates their lack of concern for the residents in the Bayview, and it’s something that cannot continue.”

Walton said he plans to hold a formal hearing on the new findings and that the board will move forward in the near future with an independent review of how groundwater rise could affect toxic contamination at the Superfund site.

“I want the Navy to be transparent when anything is found,” Walton said. “It is important that we are able to let the community know and inform them because that’s the only way we can figure out how to keep people safe.”