Navy’s Hunters Point Shipyard Cleanup in San Francisco Moves Underwater

The long-running cleanup of one of the nation’s most contaminated sites crossed a major hurdle on Thursday as officials announced the final phase of plans to remove radioactive and industrial waste from San Francisco’s former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.

This phase will take place underwater as the U.S. Navy and the Environmental Protection Agency address offshore pollution in the last of six areas that need environmental restoration.

The new plan allows the Navy, which is responsible for cleaning up the site, to address contaminated underwater sediment from a 443-acre area of the San Francisco Bay around the shipyard, otherwise known as Parcel F. This is the underwater area that wraps around the base; other parts of the base are currently undergoing remediation.

“Although today is an important day for record signing and planning about what the remedy is, it’s not the end of the work,” said Martha Guzman, the EPA’s Pacific Southwest regional administrator. “The history of this project has dealt with many hurdles, so it’s exciting to be here today to mark, really, the final action on the final parcel.”

The cleanup will focus on select contaminants — polychlorinated biphenyls, copper, lead and mercury — left by the Navy when the base was active. The goal is to remove contaminants that endanger animals that live in bay mud, as well as birds and humans that eat the contaminated shellfish and fish harvested from the water around the site.

Community advocates have called the agreement a “back door deal” that doesn’t fully address the radioactive contamination the Navy left in the soil at the site.

Work won’t start until 2027 after the Navy completes remedial design and planning. It will take about two years to complete the more than $30 million project; the Navy has yet to select a contractor to carry out the work or landfill to dispose of the waste.

The polluted sediment could be removed or remediated with dredging, treatment in place, capping or natural processes that eradicate the contaminants over time. The U.S. EPA and the California EPA oversee and enforce the Navy’s cleanup actions.

The 866-acre Hunters Point Naval Shipyard 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 agencies overseeing the cleanup alongside the Navy spent at least six years figuring out the best way to clean up the underwater portion of the site because it poses a risk to people and wildlife.

Cleanup of the site began in 1996.

“You don’t have to be an engineer to do the math, but that’s 28 years,” said Eileen White, executive officer of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board. “I want to thank the community who’s had to wait, but the end product is going to be great.”

The project is important as storms intensify because of human-caused climate change, said Michael Montgomery, director of the EPA’s Superfund and Emergency Management Division.

“Very large storms can cause disruption,” he said. “So, in terms of super storms, the remedy would help prevent contamination from shifting.”

Bayview residents, including Arieann Harrison, have advocated for the complete cleanup of the site for decades. Harrison, founder and CEO of the Marie Harrison Community Foundation, said community members felt blindsided by the plan.

“None of us affected by the contamination have been allowed to see the plan before they signed it today, let alone have a say,” she said. “The decision appears to be woefully inadequate to protect the public and the environment.”

Harrison wants the Navy to include eradicating radioactive contamination in its new plan. However, the Navy insists it did not discover radioactive chemicals or objects during its recent testing of Parcel F.

Danielle Janda, bay closure manager for the former Hunter Point Naval Shipyard, said that doesn’t mean no radioactive objects are buried within the sediment.

“There’s no way to find every single one,” she said. “While we do the remediation, there’s going to have to be controls in place to make sure that people don’t encounter those.”

Janda said the agreement allows the Navy to design the cleanup to “ensure long-term public health and safety and protect the local environment.”

Community groups have alerted the Navy for years that the “refusal to undertake any cleanup of radionuclides is inappropriate,” according to a 2018 Committee to Bridge the Gap analysis. The report suggests radioactive contamination on land could have migrated through stormwater runoff or sewer lines, and “it simply isn’t credible to assert no radioactive contamination in Parcel F.”

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

The final remediation phase raises fresh questions about the city’s plans to build thousands of homes on what is 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, retail, and over 340 acres of parks and open space.