Must-read recap: The New Lede's top stories

Hunters Point Superfund site may not get full cleanup and Chicago's Southeast Side pushes back against pollution

Hunters Point Superfund site may not get full cleanup

A full cleanup may not materialize for the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco, a Superfund site since 1989, according to a memo the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released on September 30th. The memo, which was directed to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and other groups, implied that the site may remain unfit for unrestricted residential use after the cleanup concludes. The radioactive waste-contaminated shipyard is located within Bayview Hunters Point, a low-income community of color with high asthma and cancer rates.

PEER said in a press release that the memo indicates the cleanup would violate Proposition P, a voter initiative calling for the agency to fully clean the shipyard. Instead, the memo suggests the cleanup plan may entail relying on land use restrictions and covering contamination with caps.

“Regarding your recommendation that soil radiological cleanup goals be based on an unrestricted use scenario consistent with the City/County of San Francisco’s Proposition P, broadly, EPA’s policy is to achieve protective remedies consistent with reasonably anticipated future land use,” said the EPA memo. “Institutional controls, like land use restrictions, are a common component of Superfund remedies nationwide to ensure protection of human health but also to ensure the integrity of remedies in the long term.”

“They’re sort of tacitly conceding the point that what’s going to be left is well above what should be left according to EPA’s own guidance on Superfund matters,” said PEER Pacific Director Jeff Ruch. “Hunters Point was supposed to be the biggest commercial redevelopment since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. If it’s not cleared for unrestricted use, it’s not clear to what extent it’s going to be usable.”

Bradley Angel, Executive Director of Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, called possible failure to fully clean the site “outrageous,” saying inadequate action would “continue to put the health, wellbeing, and lives of Bayview Hunters Point residents at risk.”

“We always knew [Bayview Hunters Point residents] wanted a full cleanup, but more and more residents, more community-based organizations are speaking out in unity,” said Angel. “This is quite alarming, to put it mildly.” (Read the rest of the story.)

Chicago’s Southeast Side pushes back against pollution

For more than 100 years, the Southeast Side of Chicago has been a magnet for industry – a place where working class families made their homes and raised their children alongside steel mills, grain elevators, cement kilns and other operations drawn to the easy transportation of goods afforded by rail lines and the proximity of the Calumet River. 

There once was a common saying in the area: “If there is soot on the windows, there is food on the table.”

The price for the industrial prosperity has been high: Now the area is home to two Superfund sites, multiple landfills, and numerous abandoned tracts of heavily polluted land that lie adjacent to a new cast of polluters – factories constantly busy milling, grinding and combusting. 

Once a marshy area, 40% of Chicago’s wetlands have disappeared since 1900. The wetlands, which filter pollutants and prevent flooding, began to drain when the city altered the course of the Chicago River, sending its industrial waste-fouled waters away from population centers.

Without the wetlands, residents of Chicago’s Southeast Side experience high rates of flood damages, poor air quality, heat vulnerability, and other harmful environmental impacts, leaving people struggling for ways to protect their health and the environment. 

“All of the environmental issues facing Chicago are magnified on the Southeast Side where industrialization and contamination have created an inhospitable and dangerous environment for many,” said Daniel Suarez, conservation manager for Audubon Great Lakes, a regional arm of the national nonprofit conservation group.

Last year, in a letter to Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the “conditions facing Chicago’s Southeast Side epitomize the problem of environmental injustice…”

Regan noted that the neighborhood ranked at the “highest levels for many pollution indicators… including fine particulate matter, air toxics, cancer risk, respiratory hazard, traffic proximity, lead paint, Superfund site proximity, hazardous waste proximity, and wastewater discharges.” (Read the rest of the story.)