Declare a Public Health Emergency at Hunters Point

It’s Time for Governor Newsom to Do the Right Thing

“As Mayor, Newsom focused on development projects in Hunters Point and Treasure Island.”

Mayoralty of Gavin Newsom—January 08, 2004 - January 10, 2011 Wikipedia

by Dr. Ahimsa Porter Sumchai

• • • • • • • • August 2024 • • • • • • • •

M ayor Gavin Newsom handed over a crisp $1 bill, and the Navy handed over a key piece of Hunters Point Naval Shipyard to San Francisco on Wednesday, January 12, 2005, finally allowing the City to start developing one of its largest and last slices of vacant land.

In March of 2004, Newsom received an “unsettling letter from the Navy suggesting that the City’s plans to transform the 500-acre shipyard into a new neighborhood were in jeopardy. “It was not the letter we were expecting to receive,” Newsom is quoted as saying as he prepared to take a red-eye flight to Washington, DC, on March 23, 2004, to meet with H.T. Johnson, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Installations and the Environment. According to Chronicle reporting, “City officials would not release the Navy’s letter and declined to reveal the Navy’s specific concerns.”

Meanwhile…back at the ranch! The Hunters Point Shipyard Draft Final Historical Radiological Assessment was being prepared for release in March of 2004 when Newsom received the letter he was not “expecting to receive.”

The HRA detailed the history of the use of radioactive materials from 1939 to 2003. The Navy had come down with a crippling case of “cold feet” about the most contentious and enduring fact arising from Newsom’s leadership in building homes on a nuclear dump - that the property was unfit for human habitation when he paid a dollar for it!

The 2003 President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Aaron Peskin, wrote and championed City Ordinance 115-05, the Environment Code. Section 101 states, “All officers, boards, commissions and departments of the City shall implement the Precautionary Principle in conducting the City and County’s affairs.”

The Precautionary Principle affirms San Francisco’s leaders’ and citizens’ duty to prevent harm through anticipatory action: “There is a duty to take anticipatory action to prevent harm.”

“Where threats of serious or irreversible damage to people or nature exist, lack of full scientific certainty about cause and effect shall not be viewed as sufficient reason for the City to postpone cost effective measures to prevent degradation of the environment or protect the health of its citizens. Gaps in scientific research …will provide a guidepost for future research, but will not prevent the City from taking protective action.” —Chapter 1: Precautionary Principle Policy Statement

The Community Right to Know is codified as a key element of the Precautionary Principle approach to decision-making. The affected community has a right to know complete and accurate information about potential human health and environmental impacts associated with the selection of products, services, operations, or plans. Government businesses, community groups and the general public share in the duty to take anticipatory action to prevent harm.

The deafening wind tunnel of silence emanating from the Office of Governor Gavin Newsom has become unbearable as the Federal property he paid a dollar accumulates a debt in liability due to mounting evidence of human exposure that is clear and convincing and beyond a reasonable doubt.

Why I am calling for a Local Public Health Emergency in San Francisco?

California law governs a local health officer’s decision to declare or proclaim a public health emergency to exercise extraordinary protective power to respond.

The term emergency can be applied to any situation requiring urgent and immediate action to mitigate and prevent an adverse situation that threatens public health, property, or the environment.

Under California Health Safety Code, Section 101080- a regulation expanded to include any imminent or proximate threat of introduction of any contagious, infectious, or communicable disease, chemical agent, biologic agent, toxin or radioactive agent—the local Health Officer or designee may declare a Local Public Health Emergency to exercise extraordinary power to respond to imminent and proximate threats to human health and safety.

On October 18, 2022, I submitted the following declaration in live testimony before the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Hearing. Supervisor Shamann Walton shut down the microphone before I could complete a legal statement under California Health & Safety Code Section 101080. The imminent and proximate threats to human health and safety were first reported on July 29, 2022, to the National Response Center as Incident Report #1342958. The Notification Report is attached. There has been no response to this notification from NRC or EPA to date. These actions are entered into Deposition testimony in four civil actions filed in Federal Court.

“As local health Officer Designee, operating a licensed medical facility located within the half mile perimeter of the Federal Superfund System at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, its Parcel E-2 radiation contaminated industrial landfill, shorelines and campus of the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratories, I Hereby Declare - under California Health & Safety Code Section 101080 - a Local Public Health Emergency within the one mile perimeter of the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Federal Superfund System - the active source of human exposures to radioactive heavy metals and cancer causing chemicals on the State of California Proposition 65 List.”—Ahimsa Porter Sumchai, MD - Founder, Director, Principle Investigator, Hunters Point Community Biomonitoring Program - October 18, 2022

“HBM is the only way to identify and quantify human exposure and risk, elucidate the mechanism of toxic effects and ultimately decide if measures have to be taken to reduce exposure.”—Human Biomonitoring: State of the Art, Jurgen Angerer et al. Int J Hug Environ Health May 2007

Helen H. Kang, Professor of Law and Director of Golden Gate University School of Law Environmental Justice Clinic, offered Testimony Before AB 3121 Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals on October 12, 2021.

“My testimony will focus on the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood in San Francisco - which I’ll refer to as Hunters Point - to illustrate the role of systemic racism in magnifying pollution in the historically Black neighborhood. Specifically, I will draw the connection between environmental injustice and de sure segregation in San Francisco following the Great Migration. I will touch on redlining and zoning practices that further entrenched the government-sponsored racial segregation in BVHP, resulting in concentrating Black residents into one of the most polluted areas in the nation. I will conclude by demonstrating how these injustices have been compounded in the last two decades, despite federal and state civil rights laws, through urban renewal and development practices.”

EPA EJScreen Environmental Justice Indexes document Asthma, Heart Disease, and Low Life Expectancy to rank in the 95th to 100th percentiles at Palou Avenue to Crisp Road entry to HPNS - Red Area. Additionally, fine particulates, diesel particulates, lead exposure, hazardous waste proximity, traffic proximity, superfund proximity, and NATA Air Toxics Cancer Risk all rank in the 90th to 100th percentiles. These rankings mean up to 100% of people in the US do not experience this burden of impact.

While Director of the Clinic, Kang wrote in June 2022 that US Attorneys’ Offices throughout our nation could take a meaningful role in enhancing environmental justice through proper planning, communication with communities most impacted by pollution, and provision of funding and expertise.

“To remedy the injustices of this past, the focus on environmental justice is too narrow a vision, while still fundamental. The solutions require a whole-of-government approach that incorporates reparations for these communities.”—Helen Kang - Professor of Law, Director, Environmental Law & Justice Clinic.

On June 23, 2020, Law Offices of Bonner & Bonner issued a Press Release on behalf of an estimated 8,000 plaintiffs enrolled in the Hunters Point Community Lawsuit after photo and video evidence was captured on June 17, 2020, by a Hunters Point hilltop resident who shrewdly filed a complaint with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. Images captured a backhoe deep soil excavator operating adjacent to the unfortified chain metal fence separating Superfund-delisted Parcel A-2 from children’s schools, playgrounds, and daycare centers.

“The 8000 Plaintiffs have been joined by lawsuits filed by homeowners and hundreds of San Francisco police officers. Yet, even as these lawsuits are pending in federal court and even amid this heavy, historic moment of a global pandemic, the Mayor of San Francisco, first to order people to “shelter in place” to avoid mass contamination by coronavirus, along with the Governor, who guardedly orders stages of business openings, clandestinely endorse a venomous contamination of the predominantly Black population of Hunters Point. Earthmovers were photographed just last week digging up dirt in the shipyard releasing radioactive particles into the surrounding community of schools and homes…and beyond.”—Charles Bonner, Esq - Attorney for the People of Hunters Point

Shame About The Shipyard by Saul Bloom - Verdict - 2002 Illustration by Shipyard Artist Elizabeth Brizzi

Saul Bloom - Director of Arc Ecology, wrote in Shame About the Shipyard: The History of Environmental Contamination and Management of the Hunters Point Shipyard in an article published in the January 2002 issue of Verdict - Journal of the National Coalition of Concerned Legal Professionals:

“In San Francisco’s Hunters Point, 25,000 people live near a decommissioned naval base, including a 46 acre toxic waste dump and the remainders of the Navy’s Radiological Defense Laboratory. According to some, it is one of the most polluted sites in the world, possibly for a long time to come. Is the Navy fulfilling its responsibility to the residents … or simply laying waste and walking off?”

Bloom died of the most devastating type of brain cancer, Glioblastoma Multiforme, in August of 2016 after documenting his exposure to cancer causing heavy metals and ionizing radiation in a Verdict article he authored in April of 2002.

In a 2010 New York Times Article, Bloom laid the blame squarely on Mayor Gavin Newsom for axing funding for Arc Ecology’s 3rd Street headquarters - Community Window on the Shipyard Cleanup.

Bloom told NYT that Newsom cut Redevelopment Agency funding for the nonprofit in the aftermath of a dispute over health effects documented in a proposal in the redevelopment plan to build a highway coursing through Yosemite Slough near Candlestick Park residences, schools, and the Candlestick Point State Recreation Area.

It was not the first time Newsom violated the City’s Precautionary Principle. In 2007, Newsom axed funding for BVHP environmental health programs using the implementation of the Citywide Universal Healthcare program as justification.

Echoing from the graveyard of environmental injustice, Bloom spoke in the aftermath of the October 2000 Federal Injunction that shut down Astoria Metals at Drydock 4.

“US District Court granted an injunction sought by San Francisco WaterKeepers and Arc Ecology to halt further use of Dry Dock 4 until the Navy’s tenant, Astoria Metals, can demonstrate that it can safely operate the facility. The injunction came five years and four lawsuits after the environmental groups first sought to halt Astoria Metals’ ongoing violations of the Clean Water Act and numerous environmental regulations.

“We’ve shut down this polluter, but the problem remains the same: the Navy continues to disregard its responsibility for the environmental stewardship of the Hunters Point Shipyard. The reason the Navy’s tenants keep violating the law is that they know the Navy doesn’t care.”

Nonprofit Says City Took Revenge for Airing Views

“The misrepresentation theme is repeated throughout the second amended complaint.”

In validation of Bloom’s opinion, in November of 2023, Federal Judge James Donato of US District Court summarizes key misrepresentations made by the Navy to SFPD in Kevin Abbey v USA:

11. The Navy “negligently told the City that there was no history of any radioactive substances at the Building 606 Property”.

12. The Navy “told the City that SFPD could use the Building 606 Property without exposing SFPD employees to health risk from exposure to hazardous substances.

13. The Navy “provided the City with a Finding of Suitability to Lease and property-specific environmental baseline survey results that included numerous material misrepresentations, false statements and failures to warn.”

The SFPD wrongful death lawsuit is one of four major civil actions before the Federal courts against Tetra Tech. Officers, administrative and laboratory staff charge the United States of America Department of the Navy failed to warn the City & County of San Francisco about the hazardous substances used and released at HPNS that were a “substantial factor in causing the plaintiff’s acute symptoms and elevated risk of developing life-threatening cancers and other diseases.”

Demonstrating excellence in investigative journalism, SF Chronicle writers Jason Fagone and Cynthia Dizikes detail—in the series Dangerous Ground—that several officers underwent medical evaluation by SFDPH-sponsored occupational physicians with signs and symptoms of environmental toxic exposure.

In Flint, Michigan, a judge dismissed criminal charges against former governor Rick Snyder on December 12, 2023, stemming from the Flint water crisis and regional lead exposures after the state Supreme Court ruled indictments by a one-person grand jury were invalid. On April 25, 2014, on order from the Governor, Flint switched to the Flint River as its main water source. By May, residents filed complaints about the water’s color and smell, and in August 2014, E. coli intestinal bacteria were cultured from the water.

EPA and Flint City detected lead in January 2015, and independent researchers detected high lead levels in Flint homes. Pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha conducted human biomonitoring for lead, which was published in the American Journal of Public Health in December 2015.

It was not until December 14, 2015, that Flint’s Mayor declared a public health emergency. On January 5, 2016, Michigan Governor Rick Synder finally declared a state of emergency…along with President Obama.

Snyder was charged with two counts of misconduct and willful neglect in the enterprise corruption and criminal cover-up that exposed over 100,000 residents and children to lead and was blamed for nine deaths due to an outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease. He left office in 2019.

Flint residents complained about the water’s smell, taste, and appearance and reported rashes, hair loss, and other related health concerns. Snyder did not acknowledge that lead was a problem until 17 months after the water switch. Michigan Health & Services Director Nick Lyon, along with four others, were charged with involuntary manslaughter.

Justice for Flint families is long overdue as of this article. Since the water crisis began in 2014, Flint residents have yet to see a dime from the $626 million Flint Water Crisis settlement.

The 1999 Community Survey is a population-based survey of 249 households conducted by the Health & Environmental Task Force - a partnership between community leaders, the San Francisco Department of Public Health, and the University of California San Francisco. Funded by the California Endowment and the San Francisco Foundation, the survey recorded community concerns about the disproportionate rates of environmentally linked diseases and the excess burden of environmental toxins in the neighborhood.

For the first time in history, the United Nations recognized that everyone, everywhere, has the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Resolutions from the Human Rights Council in 2021 and the General Assembly in 2022 - A/RES/76/300 - add this fundamental human right to the library of internationally recognized laws.

In 2024, the UNEA Environment Assembly released its report on the global poly crisis facing the modern world. That report identifies critical shifts, signals and potential disruptions caused by the relationship between humans and the environment. The top four signals include unforeseen impacts of harmful chemicals and materials.

Health Programs in Bayview Hunters Point & Recommendations for Improving the Health of Residents, published on September 19, 2006, by Mitchell H. Katz, MD - Director of Health, identifies in Problem Description for Environmental Health:

“In the United States, low-income and predominantly minority neighborhoods often have greater concentrations of hazardous conditions. These conditions include…contaminated soil and water, industrial emissions and exhaust from motor vehicles. The existence of these conditions reflect current and historic discriminatory land use decisions, populations dynamics and economic forces. Bayview Hunters Point has a number of such potentially adverse environmental conditions.”

Health Programs in BVHP identifies Bayview Hunters Point as the community with the heaviest concentrations of industrial uses in San Francisco. “The Hunters Point Shipyard was placed on the Federal government’s National Priorities List of the nation’s worst toxic sites in 1989. Parts of the shipyard remain contaminated and unusable because of chemical pollution, radioactive waste and neglect.”

The Report notes that the Hunters Point Power Plant emitted particulate matter and toxic air contaminants until its closure on May 15, 2006. Eighty percent of the City’s sewerage is treated at the Southeast Water Pollution Control Plant. Cement production and diesel bus and vehicle storage are sited on Port property, adjacent to neighborhoods like Hunters View, where youth populations are as high as 39%.

Health Programs in BVHP document a 10% asthma rate, with 15.5% of children having asthma. The asthma rate for the general U.S. population is 5.6%. The rate of birth defects was 44.3 per 1000 compared to 33.1 per 1000 births for the City at large. The breast cancer rate is double that of San Francisco and one of the highest in the country.

The Report concludes that BVHP has a high concentration of substandard housing, contributing to poor indoor air quality, high prevalence rates for asthma and cardiopulmonary diseases, and preventable ER visits and hospitalizations. The 2006 Report fails to acknowledge the impacts of industrial toxic air pollution, including fine particulates and diesel particulates.

Environmental activists, community advocates, and medical scientists continue to challenge public health and environmental regulators to apply their research, regulatory, and planning resources to clean up contaminated landfills, prevent hazardous industrial uses, reduce diesel vehicle traffic, and improve conditions in federally subsidized public housing.

“The hazardous environmental conditions described above exist concomitantly with other forms of disadvantage that result in poorer levels of physical health and well being. Bayview Hunters Point is deficient in environmental health assists such as full service grocery stores and safe and inviting public parks. Research has conclusively shown that neighborhoods without such resources have higher rates of premature death and hospitalizations for chronic diseases.”

The Hunters Point Community Biomonitoring Program and its 501(c)(3) public benefit Foundation have filled the void in environmental science research and public health advocacy in BVHP. HP Biomonitoring seeks benevolent support from the Board of Trustees of the Clarence E. Heller Foundation and Hirsch Philanthropic Partners. The request for $50,000 in funding for fiscal year 2025-2026 will offset funding deficits incurred in the aftermath of an urgent disaster relocation in 2023, support general operational costs, and launch Phase IV of the Hunters Point Community Toxic Registry. Community Window on Environmental Exposures proposes to revisit - after 25 years - the Hunters Point Biomonitoring Community Survey 2025.

Please donate to the HP Community Biomonitoring Project.

Dr. Ahimsa Porter Sumchai is a climate activist living on the Westside.

August 2024