Original author: Avery Hartmans

Melia Robinson/Business Insider

The San Francisco Shipyard, a mixed-use development rising on the site of a former nuclear testing facility, is in limbo amid new allegations. The Navy has found evidence that a government contractor hired to clean radioactive contamination from the area botched the cleanup. Almost half of the cleanup work was later showed to be falsified or "suspect." Workers swapped soil samples from contaminated sites with clean ones.

 

A sprawling middle-class neighborhood is rising on the site of a former nuclear testing facility in San Francisco. But its future is uncertain amid new allegations of a botched cleanup.

The US Navy has learned that Tetra Tech, a government contractor tasked with the cleanup of radioactive contamination at the retired San Francisco Naval Shipyard, faked more soil tests than previously thought, in order to expedite the city's largest redevelopment project. Workers swapped samples from areas known to be highly contaminated with dirt from clean areas.

According to investigations by Curbed SF and NBC Bay Area, almost half of the toxic waste-site cleanup was "suspect" or has "evidence of potential data manipulation or falsification."

These findings could cause the project to be delayed many years. The Navy is expected to release the results of its investigation into Tetra Tech in a public meeting on January 31.

This long-forgotten patch of the San Francisco waterfront holds promise for the city's strained housing market. The plan is to transform the retired shipyard into a bustling live-work community with 12,000 new homes and about five million square feet of office and commercial space. The project is being developed by Five Point, a spinoff of mega-developer Lennar.

The project has a price tag to match its hefty ambitions: $8 billion. That's on top of the $1 billion or more in taxpayer money that has been spent on the cleanup since the 1990s.

Melia Robinson/Business Insider

Hunters Point was a private commercial shipyard from 1869 until the start of World War II, when the Navy bought the property. The military repaired ships and submarines there. From 1948 to 1969, the shipyard hosted a then-secret laboratory that ran tests on ships exposed to nuclear weapons, as well as research on the effects of radiation on living organisms.

Military equipment and ships contaminated by atomic bomb explosions were left at Hunters Point, and toxic substances including petroleum fuels, pesticides, and heavy metals seeped into and polluted the soil at Hunters Point, the San Francisco Chronicle reported in 2015.

After the shipyard closed, it was declared a "superfund" site — a toxic-waste site where the United States Environmental Protection Agency can force parties responsible for the contamination to either perform cleanups or reimburse the government to do the work.

That burden fell on the Navy. It outsourced the work of decontamination and soil-testing to Tetra Tech. But several investigations into the nature of those efforts have led to scandals.

Melia Robinson/Business Insider

The City of San Francisco selected Lennar as the master developer of the shipyard in 1999. A year later, an investigation by SF Weekly found that the Navy mishandled the radioactive waste it produced there. It reportedly dumped huge amounts of contaminated sand into the San Francisco Bay and sprinkled radioactive material around the base to practice cleanup.

In 2017, several former employees of Tetra Tech admitted to faking soil tests. They described a company culture that valued speed over safety and accuracy. The whistleblowers led the federal Environmental Protection Agency to delay transfers of land from the Navy to the new master developer, Five Point.

The latest revelations suggest the cleanup was more questionable than previously thought.

Last fall, the Navy hired third-party contractors to conduct a review of Tetra Tech's data. A series of draft reports that those contractors presented to the Navy (and which Curbed SF reviewed via a public records request) showed that 853 "units" of land at the shipyard were tested. Of them, 414 were identified as falsified or suspect, representing 48% of total units.

The reports, which have not been publicly released, recommend retesting those 414 units.

Melia Robinson/Business Insider

Greenaction, a local non-profit fighting for health and environmental justice, has filed a petitionwith the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to strip Tetra Tech of its license to perform radiological cleanup. Tetra Tech received a $85 million contract from the EPA in October to assess the abandoned uranium mines in the Navajo Nation across the American southwest.

It's unclear what impact the new allegations leveled against Tetra Tech might have.

Construction on the mixed-use development at the (rebranded) San Francisco Shipyard began long ago. Five Point has sold about 300 townhouses and condominiums and plans to build 11,000 more units. A recent quarterly report from Five Point said it expects the Navy to deliver the last 408 acres it owns in phases between 2019 and 2022, instead of starting this year.

Five Point declined to comment on the draft reports and referred Business Insider to the Navy.

The Navy has said that residents who already live at the San Francisco Shipyard are "100 percent safe." The existing housing is located on land that was used for military housing and non-industrial activities, SF Curbed reported and a spokesperson with Five Point confirmed.

Bradley Angel, executive director of watchdog-group Greenaction, told Business Insider that he thinks prospective buyers will think twice before settling down at the shipyard.

"If I was living there, I would definitely be asking some questions," Angel said.

Original author: Melia Robinson

AMC Networks

The "Blue Planet II" production team's submersible sprung a leak when they were almost 1,500 feet deep in Antarctic waters. Fortunately, they were able to discover the cause and to conduct repairs underwater. Pushing the envelope is necessary to discover something new and show unseen parts of the world, according to one of the show's producers, but they managed to do that without anyone getting hurt.

Water started to pool on the submersible floor almost 1,500 feet deep into the first dive the "Blue Planet II" production team took in Antarctic waters.

A quick taste revealed it was salty, leaking in from the frigid seas outside.

"That wasn't on the schedule for that day," Orla Doherty, producer of the episode examining life in "the deep," told Business Insider.

As Doherty said in a behind-the-scenes featurette from the episode, it's a bit concerning to discover that half an hour into a dive — when it takes 30 minutes to get back to the surface — that there's water coming in.

Fortunately, within 20 minutes, the sub's pilot was able to trace the problem to a faulty pressure gauge, which allowed them to repair the leak and resume their examination of the underwater world.

AMC Networks

"The way I see it is that I thought it was our duty to put ourselves in extraordinary situations because we wanted to show the extraordinary and you can't do that from your desk in the UK, you've got to get out there and go to these places," said Doherty.

And show the extraordinary they did. The team dove deeper than anyone else ever had in those waters, and revealed that the freezing seas below the most remote and extreme environment on the planet teem with life.

"To film in Antarctica, to really try and do something that humans haven't done before, there's going to be risks," said Doherty.

But it's not risk for the sake of risk, she said.

"Never think that we're just saying, 'oh let's get out there and do something wild.'"

In spending 6,000 hours underwater over four years, traveling to 39 countries to mount 125 expeditions,  and covering every ocean in the world, there were no serious injuries, according to Doherty.

"We're not out there to push the envelope just for the sake of it, we're out there to do it to tell a new story, but as importantly, to do it with safety as the number one priority," she said.

"Blue Planet II" airs at 9 pm ET on Saturdays on BBC America.

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