When San Francisco gets control of the old Hunters Point Shipyard, some of the soil might still contain lingering levels of radiation, even though voters in the city passed a measure demanding a full cleanup.
But in this memo from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or the EPA, a top official with the agency overseeing the Navy’s cleanup effort, signals the EPA may allow the Navy to stop short of what the city considers “full cleanup.”
“So, what does that mean? It means the Navy could turn the property over to San Francisco with what are called"land use restrictions.” Essentially, the EPA would say the land is safe to live on, as long as residents don’t dig too deep into their yards, or they cover the soil with concrete to protect them from the long term exposure to radiation.
In that memo to a public employee environmental watchdog group, known as peer, the EPA states its land use rules are designed to “ensure protection of human health but also to ensure the integrity of remedies in the long term.”Jeff Ruch with the watchdog group “Reer” said the restrictions the EPA could impose like covering the site may only work in the short term.
“There’s no assurance than 10, 15 years from now, when the site has supposedly been declared clean, that it will remain clean,” he said.There’s no date for when the site could be expected to be turned over to San Francisco, but it’s unclear at this point what will happen when that day comes, if the city refuses to accept the land because they consider it too contaminated to be used safely.
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