The U.S. Navy, in a September 18 community presentation, pronounced the inhabited areas of San Francisco Bay’s Treasure Island “free of any threat to public health or safety . . . based on the data independently collected by the Navy and the CDPH [California Department of Public Health].”

The Navy is the lead agency in charge of cleaning up the manmade island―which served as a naval base in World War II―for transfer to the city of San Francisco. That includes identifying and cleaning up nuclear contamination from various military operations in the past. It is moving quickly to complete the process, although some in the community feel the federal government is ignoring state and local input at Treasure Island’s peril.

The Navy issued a draft report in August which acknowledged that radioactive contamination was more widespread than described in its earlier 2006 report, which found the island to be relatively clean.

But the public health department, which began raising serious questions about the Navy assessment of public safety on Treasure Island in 2010, is not on board with all the findings in the draft report, according to the Bay Citizen.

The public health department was critical of the Navy’s failure to release information on 1,500 soil samples, raising questions about radioactive contamination. The Navy also hasn’t explained why “radioactive and poisonous wastes had been buried west of the abandoned landing strip in a future construction area,” and it hasn’t examined the effects wind and water flow would have had on spreading contamination.

Public health officials are still not confident they know where radioactive activities took place and how contamination might have been spread. Although the Navy still officially refers to radioactive contamination on the island as negligible, it has hauled away at least 1,000 truckloads of radioactive material.

Internal e-mails uncovered by The Bay Citizen in August indicated that the Navy was pressing the public health department to keep its concerns about radiation contamination private and oral, and looking for allies to keep the lid on.

In communications with the state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), which has been more amenable to the Navy’s point of view, military officials said that if DTSC received an expected communication, “Don’t send it to us. If after your review, DTSC  (Department of Toxic Substances Control) is not satisfied with the content, and/or if it is not clearly written and to the point, I would recommend sending it back to CDPH for revision. That way, the Navy does not receive any memo from CDPH that DTSC has not endorsed.”    

Currently, about 2,000 mostly low- to middle-income residents live on the island. Around 29% are there through the sponsorship of the Treasure Island Homeless Development Initiative's member organizations. The city is planning on constructing 8,000 homes, three hotels, a 400-slip marina, restaurants and parks on the soon-to-be prime real estate.

–Ken Broder

To Learn More:

Navy's Treasure Island Radiation Report Found Wanting (by Matt Smith, The Bay Citizen)

Treasure Island: A Radioactive Isle (by Ashley Bates, East Bay Express)

Navy Sought to Stifle Radiation Concerns about Treasure Island (by Matt Smith and Katharine Mieszkowski, The Bay Citizen)

Treasure Island’s Secret Booty: Radioactivity (by Ken Broder, AllGov)