Published: August 19th, 2012 at 12:52 pm ET
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Title: Treasure Island Radiation More Widespread than Reported
Source: NBC (San Francisco Bay Area)
Author: Matt Smith / Bay Citizen
Date: Aug 17, 2012
Emphasis Added
Radioactive contamination at the Treasure Island Naval Station, where San Francisco plans to build a high-rise community for 20,000 residents, is more widespread than previously disclosed, according to a new U.S. Navy report and other documents obtained by The Bay Citizen.
[...]
The draft report, dated Aug. 6, marks the first time the Navy has fully acknowledged that the island, created from landfill in 1937, was used as a repair and salvage operation for a Pacific fleet exposed to atomic blasts during the Cold War.
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Since 1993, the Navy has been preparing the site for handoff to the city, which has agreed to pay $105 million for it.
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[State health] officials have raised questions about exposure for residents of the island. At an August 2011 meeting, a summary shows, the health department alleged that a Navy contractor might have inadvertently exposed children to radioactive dust at a Boys & Girls Club and a child development center on the island.
The Navy and state Department of Toxic Substances Control, a separate agency also monitoring Navy cleanup activities, said the Boys & Girls Club and child center never were contaminated with radioactive dust. They also say that, in general, radiation levels found on the island are too low to endanger human health – only slightly higher than natural radiation found in ordinary backyards.
However, in a Dec. 17, 2010 email, state public health official Peter Sapunor said Navy contractors had dug up and hauled off 16,000 cubic yards of contaminated dirt, some with radiation levels 400 times the Environmental Protection Agency’s human exposure limits for topsoil. Sapunor said he believed extensive radioactive material remained in the soil surrounding those excavations.
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In October 2010, Larry Morgan, an environmental management specialist with the state Department of Public Health, told the Department of Toxic Substances Control that “the finding of relatively high level radioactive sources … raise(s) additional unanswered questions” about assumptions related to various locations on the island. Morgan recommended a new “conceptual model” that assumed radioactive contamination could be more extensive than previously believed.
Six months later, an environmental cleanup manager for the public health department, Stephen Woods, wrote that “the large volume of radiological contaminated material, high number of radioactive commodities, (individual items or sources,) and high levels of radioactive contamination … have raised concerns with CDPH regarding the nature and extent of the radiological contamination present at Treasure Island.”
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Criticism from state public health officials took a legal turn in a June 2011 missive from the department’s radiological health enforcement specialist, Kent Prendergast.
He issued a notice of violation against the Navy’s chief cleanup contractor, Shaw Environmental & Infrastructure Inc. [more on Shaw here BBC journalist on Fukushima story you didn't hear on CNN: "They Knew" -- "I've seen a lot of sick stuff in my career, but this was sick on a new level"] , for repeatedly digging, piling, spreading and transporting dirt from sites contaminated with toxic chemicals. Shaw had not tested that material for radioactivity, Prendergast wrote, potentially spreading radiation beyond its original location.
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Radiation exposure was once such a concern on Treasure Island, the researchers found, that the former Navy base had a radiological “counting room” where specialists tested Navy personnel and equipment for contamination.
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“That amount of radium found to date,” [environmental cleanup manager for the state Department of Public Health Stephen Woods] wrote, “cannot be explained by gauges, deck markers and decontamination activities.”
h/t Anonymous tips
Published: August 19th, 2012 at 12:52 pm ET
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sending...
Sink the island, because people won't go near it now.
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"radiation levels 400 times the Environmental Protection Agency’s human exposure limits for topsoil"
Anybody know what that means in terms of Bq/kg or CPM?
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http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/understand/health_effects.html#whatlimits
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That's some damn fine fear-mongering … Now, do you have an actual answer? I'm also wondering what the counter counted.
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Fearmongering ? Here ? Show me , shed a light of fear removing truth if you can in this world of sociopatic industrial deception .
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and its logical truthseeking countermovement (enenews etc).
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They build an island from nuclear waste and call it treasure island?
And they want to build housing for 20 thousand on top of it?
Am I missing something here?
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Yes, CBuck…You missed the part where Treasure Island was built in the mid 1930s to hold "The Worlds Fair." It was built before the atomic age, out of plain old landfill (although that may well have had the usual contaminants for that day and age) but not out of nuclear materials.
After the Fair, when the war started, Treasure Island was turned over to the Navy to be a military base. It became contaminated primarily during the '50s when the base became home port for the ships used during the Pacific bomb tests, and probably from storage of nuclear materials on base from that time until its decommissioning.
The crime is that the property was sold to developers to build real estate. The authorities, of course, should have known better, but…there we go again. I had friends who moved there in the 1990s, and started their families there.
Just wanted to state that the island was named for the World's Fair and was not built out of nuclear waste.
Thank you for listening.
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GAO (2010) Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and
Related Agencies, Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives
[Excerpted] To that end, DOD has established the Defense Environmental Restoration Program (DERP) and identified over 31,600 sites that are eligible for cleanup, including about 4,700 formerly used defense sites (FUDS),1 which were closed before October 2006; 21,500 sites on active installations; and 5,400 sites identified by several Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) commissions.2 http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA556907
for more discussion see http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/sabotaging-future.html
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@majia
I visited your webpage. Unfortunately, the colors you use make it almost impossible to read the text. Please switch to black on white which is so much easier on the eye. I gave up trying to read it.
I am impressed with your research, however.
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http://m.youtube.com/index?desktop_uri=%2F&gl=US#/watch?v=zLS6NCZPiSY
Radium City Documentary on Ottawa, IL, where Westclox and DoD had young girls paint…radium on clock and military dials.
Ugly radiation documentary on radium.
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Yes, the old Catch-22 of nuclear clean-ups. The contractor knows there isn't a safe central location to carry contaminated soil to, but you have to spread it somewhere. So it goes into roadfill or garbage dumps, or maybe is bagged up for topsoil sold at national chain hardware stores.
You can blame the Navy officials for their lack of oversight. They knew where the toxic soil was going, but they turned their heads. And tried to get the city to buy their toxic real estate.
The word will get out… bargains sold or given away by the government should be examined very carefully. Your life may depend on it.
"Strong people stand up for themselves but stronger people stand up for others." ~ Jesse Jackson
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Shaw does ''good'' business in the nuke..
http://www.shawgrp.com/projects/nuclear/china-ap1000
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