In 2009, the U.S. Navy awarded Tetra Tech, a Pasadena-based consulting and engineering firm, a $300 million contract to research and clean the area that was once home to one of the largest U.S. military nuclear development sites, San Francisco’s Hunters Point Shipyard.
Drainage pipes used to dump toxic materials from nuclear development projects conducted at the shipyard between 1946 and 1969 littered the nearby area with extremely harmful and dangerous radioactive waste.
Although the area was toxic, with an expanding population and gentrification in San Francisco, many land developers sought the vast space to build thousands of new housing units. To allow for the possibility for the largest San Francisco land redevelopment project in over a hundred years to be approved, in the summer of 2009, Tetra Tech tasked Anthony Smith, a radiation technician, to find soil samples from an area free of radiation to prove that Hunters Point was safe to develop. Thus, instead of collecting samples from the actual site of contamination, Smith was instructed by Tetra Tech supervisors to collect dirt samples in an area of land already occupied by homes and flats with relatively clean soil known as Parcel A.
This action marked the beginning of Tetra Tech’s years of falsifying records and samples. It wasn’t until 2012, when several whistleblowers working within the company, including Smith himself, came forward to the public, that the company was finally exposed for having manipulated soil samples and company records.
In April 2018, after a full edged investigation was launched by the U.S. Navy, the Environmental Protection Agency concluded that over 97 percent of Tetra Tech’s testing on the site was unreliable. Currently, the Navy is responsible for cleaning and re-evaluating the site for traces of radiation, including areas where land has already been developed into residencies.
Although the Navy and San Francisco Police Department have investigated Tetra Tech’s fraudulent behavior, those involved with the scam have escaped any major repercussions. As of today, only two employees have been sentenced for their crimes, former Tetra Tech supervisors Stephen C. Rolfe and Justin E. Hubbard.
Despite the ongoing clean up moderated by the U.S. Navy, many local residents feel violated and betrayed by both land developers and those involved in the clean-up. The Hunters Point site’s immediate surrounding area includes over 12,000 housing units and millions of square feet of office space.
For decades, due to the lack of interest in and care at the radiation site, the predominantly black community in Hunters Point and Bayview area have faced increased health risks, including high breast cancer rates among women living within the residential community that are twice the average of San Francisco residents. Haakon Williams, who worked on a radioactivity research team at Hunters Point explained “Ultimately, no one is fully aware of the dangers caused by the radiation at Hunters Point Shipyard because there simply has not been testing done on much of the site, or for many of the contaminants that could be there.”
One community member, Linda Parker Pennington, is outraged by the lack of transparency. She moved to the area with her family in June 2015 after a new land development opened in the area. Linda Pennington and her husband Greg Pennington were not informed by developer FivePoint or property owner Lennar of the known health risks of living on the site. She
photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
believes that despite the current investigation and cleaning conducted by the Navy, no one is properly assessing the damage the radiation has already done within the community.
On February 6th, a report from the California Department of Public Health stated that the area of Parcel A is “free from any radiological health and safety hazards.” Pennington described her current concerns, “The people in the new developments at the shipyard––we just got here. I am not worried about my health. I am worried about the people who have been living in these contaminated areas in the Bayview for decades and have not had a voice in the media or elsewhere.”
The Penningtons, along with several other residents, led lawsuits last July against the developers for failure to disclose the dangers of the contamination and loss of property value.
