Past a chain-link fence topped with spiraled barbed wire, swaying coastal grasses conceal a cache of buried radioactive waste and poisonous pesticides from a bygone chemical plant.
Warning indicators alongside the Richmond, Calif., website’s perimeter try to discourage trespassers from breaching the locked gates, the place soil testing has detected cancer-causing gamma radiation greater than 60 instances increased than background ranges in some locations.
For many of the twentieth century, the previous Stauffer Chemical Co. disposed of hundreds of tons of business waste close to its manufacturing facility grounds alongside Richmond’s southeast shoreline. Within the final 20 years, the California Division of Poisonous Substances Management has overseen the investigation into the extent of contamination, revealing elevated radioactivity underground and on the floor. Testing additionally discovered hazardous ranges of heavy metals, together with brain-damaging lead, and the banned pesticide Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT).
However the barbed-wire-ringed Richmond website wasn’t Stauffer’s solely dumping floor.
In accordance with DTSC archival information, Stauffer discarded industrial waste at a number of Bay Space websites — together with present-day César Chávez Park and the Albany Bulb, two widespread parks constructed atop former municipal landfills. Nevertheless it wasn’t till final yr that DTSC officers shared the chemical producer’s historic disposal information with regulators answerable for the opposite websites.
“This was information to us,” stated Keith Roberson, an engineering geologist for the San Francisco Bay Regional Water High quality Board, which has oversight of the previous municipal landfills. “It was documented in a letter from 1980. Nobody that at present works for the Water Board was acquainted with that letter.”
The Albany Bulb juts into the San Francisco Bay north of Berkeley and Oakland.
(Paul Kuroda / For The Instances)
The water board, in flip, knowledgeable the cities of Berkeley and Albany that greater than 11,000 tons of Stauffer’s waste was dumped of their landfills from 1960 to 1971, including that it’s cheap to suspect the identical poisonous supplies in Richmond are current there. The company ordered the cities to check the parks for contaminants that might pose a threat to public well being and wildlife.
The long-delayed outreach has shocked environmental teams and Bay Space residents who marvel why the chemical firm’s disposal websites are solely now coming to gentle. The lapse raises questions on communication between the DTSC and the water board — two sister companies beneath the umbrella of the California EPA — whose cooperation is important to guard public well being and the setting.
“The truth that DTSC has sat on these paperwork for 44 years — shameful doesn’t start to explain it,” stated Janet Johnson, co-chair of the Richmond Shoreline Alliance.
A number of authorities companies have been concerned in environmental oversight close to Stauffer’s Richmond plant over the previous 4 many years, together with the water board and the U.S. Environmental Safety Company, in response to DTSC spokesperson Russ Edmondson. Final yr, DTSC officers reached out to 11 authorities companies to debate the attainable cleanup of the Blair Southern Pacific Landfill, a six-acre gated landfill in Richmond that had accepted Stauffer’s waste.
That’s when the DTSC shared with the companies a letter dated March 28, 1980, detailing Stauffer’s disposal places and tonnage:
- An unspecified space south of its Richmond plant acquired 18,700 tons.
- The close by Blair landfill accepted 6,200 tons.
- A hazardous waste landfill in Benecia acquired 3,700 tons.
- And the Albany and Berkeley landfills acquired 11,100 tons every.
Regulators suspect a good portion of Stauffer’s waste is alum mud, a radioactive sludge that could be a byproduct of manufacturing aluminum sulfate.
The Albany and Berkeley landfills, particularly, have undergone drastic transformations from their days as coastal dumping grounds. On the identical time, California’s guidelines and understanding of hazardous waste disposal have developed too.
The Albany landfill was the ultimate vacation spot for development and demolition particles till 1984, when native officers started changing it right into a park. At the moment it’s house to outre public artwork produced from reclaimed wooden and stone. The 90-acre Berkeley landfill acquired 1.5 million tons of municipal waste till its eventual closure in 1990, and it later grew to become Chávez Park, a preferred waterfront vacation spot with an off-leash canine park.
Each have mountain climbing trails that provide breathtaking views of the San Francisco Bay in addition to host quite a lot of migratory birds and different wildlife.
Views, strolling trails and an off-leash canine park make César Chávez Park a preferred one within the East Bay.
(Paul Kuroda / For The Instances)
Though Berkeley is making ready to brush Chávez Park with radiation detectors, there was no signage about potential radioactivity or dangerous waste seen on a go to this month to the peninsula.
At a current public assembly in Berkeley, Jim McGrath, former chair of the regional water board and a Berkeley resident, requested in regards to the Stauffer waste. Metropolis public works officers downplayed any considerations.
“All of that is simply precautionary,” one public works engineer stated on the assembly. “The water board confirmed that it’s protected.”
However the water board made no such willpower. In a January letter to Albany and Berkeley metropolis officers, it wrote that the landfills “could have accepted industrial waste supplies that might current a threat to water high quality, human well being, and the setting.”
Berkeley officers stated the data they’ve to this point doesn’t warrant park closures or limitations.
“The important thing phrases there are ‘could’ and ‘might,’” Berkeley spokesperson Matthai Chakko stated through e-mail, referencing the water board’s letter. “These are usually not definitive phrases. As talked about, we shall be doing testing as a precaution, and the findings will decide subsequent steps.”
Albany spokesperson Brennen Brown stated the water board didn’t know if radioactive alum mud from Stauffer was dumped within the metropolis’s landfill, “and no prior investigation has indicated any actionable public well being and questions of safety.”
Little public consciousness
“If there’s data to know” about waste that was dumped at César Chávez Park, stated Mitchell Engberg whereas strolling his canine, Olive, not too long ago, “I wish to know.”
(Paul Kuroda / For The Instances)
On a current weekday, Mitchell Engberg took his 3-year-old labradoodle, Olive, to Chávez Park. The Oakland resident visits there and the Albany Bulb a number of instances per week and had heard little about potential well being dangers.
“Does it imply the soil is tainted? Does it imply the water within the shoreline is affected? It’s undoubtedly alarming, and it’s regarding,” he stated. “And I really feel like like if there’s data to know, I wish to know.”
In Richmond, a number of homeless encampments have cropped up atop radioactive supplies on the Blair landfill, which is owned by Union Pacific Railroad and the California Division of Transportation. In an e-mail to Contra Costa County homeless outreach officers, a DTSC official stated the radiation will not be a short-term hazard, however the space was not match for habitation and “could signify an unacceptable elevated lifetime extra most cancers threat” if uncovered over years.
A person had been dwelling there on the positioning for months, if not years, in response to the DTSC.
Simply exterior the fence line, John Knox, 73, has been dwelling in his van parked on the base of the dead-end road, the place indicators posted by the DTSC and property house owners instruct folks to remain out resulting from hazardous waste. Knox, a former actor, stated persons are vaguely conscious of the contamination however have largely ignored the warnings.
John Knox has not too long ago been dwelling simply exterior the fence of the Blair landfill in Richmond.
(Paul Kuroda / For The Instances)
“The signage is principally ‘Don’t are available in right here,’ but it surely’s not going to present you an inventory of right here’s the issues,” Knox stated whereas seated in a chair exterior his neatly saved panel van. “That’s principally the character of unlawful dumping.
“A few of the homeless folks I do know which have lived right here for a very long time know the historical past. However that is the place we have now chosen to land for some time.”
Michael Esposito — a retired scientist who studied the well being results of radiation and served on a DTSC neighborhood advisory group for the Richmond websites affected by Stauffer’s waste — stated the soil sampling and scanning present thorium and uranium isotopes are releasing elevated ranges of gamma radiation — highly effective electromagnetic waves that may injury tissue and DNA because it passes by way of the physique.
The well being results of being uncovered to those rays or inhaling contaminated mud might be particularly dangerous for delicate teams, he stated, together with pregnant ladies and kids.
“Persons are not going to be falling down lifeless within the streets on account of this, but it surely will increase the relative threat” for most cancers, Esposito stated. “Furthermore, everyone knows that the human inhabitants could be very variable with respect to susceptibility to illness, and we don’t know if we’re merely hurting individuals who could also be the truth is, extra delicate to background radiation, which, in spite of everything, breaks down DNA molecules.”
Some remediation has occurred on the previous Stauffer plant grounds in Richmond, though the cleanup objectives for the positioning fell wanting what many residents and environmental teams sought. DTSC officers argued that eradicating extra contaminated soil would translate into heavy truck visitors and extra air air pollution.
Builders have proposed constructing as many as 4,000 new models of housing, a grocery retailer and 30 acres of recent parkland there.
Group activist Sherry Padgett, proven exterior the previous Stauffer Chemical website, has seen years of testing on the Blair landfill close to her house however no cleanup.
(Paul Kuroda / For The Instances)
For Sherry Padgett, who lives in a neighborhood alongside the Richmond shoreline, the gradual tempo on the neighboring Blair landfill website has been disappointing. As a two-time most cancers survivor, she has tried to keep away from the Stauffer website and Blair landfill, which is shrouded by marshland off the San Francisco Bay Path. She fears that the contaminants might be migrating with each rainfall and rising seas, which is elevating the water desk inland.
After greater than a decade of soil testing, there nonetheless has been no cleanup of the Blair website. Most not too long ago, the DTSC ordered a close-by park to be examined for comparability and to assist decide the cleanup threshold for the positioning.
If that cleanup effort is indicative of what’s to return for Albany and Berkeley, she hopes the cities will take precautions sooner slightly than later.
“The typical citizen thinks that if there’s a hazard, anyone would care for it,” Padgett stated, “that they’d not be allowed on the market if there was any type of potential publicity.”
She hasn’t discovered that to be the case.
Trying towards San Francisco from the previous Stauffer Chemical website.
(Paul Kuroda / For The Instances)
