RESOLUTION FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF PROPOSITION P

[Adoption of Proposition P as Official City Policy for the Environmental Remediation of Hunters Point Shipyard]

Resolution adopting the voter approved Declaration of Policy known as Proposition P as the official policy of the City and County of San Francisco, formally urging the United States Navy, the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the California Environmental Protection Agency to take all actions necessary to implement Proposition P.

WHEREAS the current Hunters Point Shipyard was built and operated under United States Navy ownership for its entire history and the Shipyard; and

WHEREAS the United States Navy decommissioned the Hunters Point Shipyard in 1974, recommissioned the Shipyard in 1986, and again decommissioned the Shipyard in 1991; and

WHEREAS between 1941 and 1991, the Navy willfully and negligently polluted the land, groundwater, and subsurface bay-lands comprising the Hunters Point Shipyard with massive amounts of toxic chemicals, heavy metals, radioactive materials and other serious environmental contaminants and hazards to public health including PCBs, PAH's, pesticides, solvents, petroleum compounds, and other shipyard wastes; and

WHEREAS under the Navy's ownership, the Shipyard became so contaminated as to require its placement on the National Priorities List in 1989; the list of the most polluted facilities in the nation; and

WHEREAS between 1945 and 1974, the Navy utilized the Hunters Point Shipyard for nuclear and radiological experimentation and disposal while failing to inform the public and the City and County of San Francisco about the potential public health threats to Shipyard workers, the neighboring community, and the local environment; and

WHEREAS the Navy continues to keep the full extent of the radiological and nuclear experimentation, and full extent of the handling of radiological and nuclear materials at the Shipyard secret from the public and the City and County of San Francisco without validation for the national security requirement for confidentiality; and

WHEREAS between 1976 and 1986 the Navy's gross negligence regarding the oversight of its master tenant, the Triple A Shipyard, forcing both the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation and the San Francisco District Attorney's Office to raid the facility, in response to a decade of massive illegal toxic dumping, crimes against the environment and public health; and

WHEREAS more than a decade passed between the beginning of its Installation Restoration Program investigation of the Shipyard's pollution 1978 and its listing on the National Priorities List in 1989 before the Navy began a cleanup program at the site; and

WHEREAS in 1991, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission voted to close the Hunters Point Shipyard. The Shipyard's closure and its transfer back to civilian use in San Francisco will being tens of thousands of people into direct contact with a federal Superfund site. Once the site is redeveloped, many thousands of people will find a home on the Shipyard as well. Potentially exposing residents, tenants, workers, visitors and neighbors to residual toxic hazards from an incomplete cleanup; and

WHEREAS in 1992, the Navy, the USEPA and CAL EPA entered into a Federal Facilities Agreement (FFA) for the remediation of the Shipyard that sets forth a specified process and schedules for the remediation of the Shipyard, and pursuant to which the Shipyard was divided into six (6) smaller portions (named Parcel A through Parcel F) to more effectively manage the cleanup of the Shipyard but has nevertheless failed to comply with this and any subsequent 6 (six) revisions of the FFA; and

WHEREAS between 1995 and today the Navy's continued negligence regarding the environmental oversight of the Shipyard resulted in continued violations of the Clean Water Act and NPDES permits by its Dry Dock 4 tenant Astoria Metals; and

WHEREAS between 1997 and 1998 the Navy and EPA assured the City and County of San Francisco that it would be safe to locate its new police multi-service center on the Shipyard in a building 20 feet from Parcel E; and

WHEREAS continued gross negligence in site management lead directly to the landfill fire in Parcel E which burned from August of 2000 to April 2001; and

WHEREAS in August 2000, the Navy failed to inform the City and County of San Francisco, the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the California Environmental Protection Agency, and the Bayview Hunters Point community the first three weeks that the Parcel E landfill had caught fire; and

WHEREAS the Navy failed to take any action to document the release of pollutants to the air and water, and failed to monitor the impacts of the landfill fire on the health of Bayview Hunters Point residents between April and September of 2000 when air borne releases from the fire were seen over the surrounding neighborhood; and

WHEREAS today, the Hunters Point Shipyard is the most contaminated portion of San Francisco, and the only federal Superfund site in the City and residents of the Hunters Point Bayview District, the neighborhood immediately surrounding the former base (an ethnically and racially minority mostly African American and low income dominant community subject to the Executive Order on Environmental Justice), are afflicted with the highest levels of cancer, respiratory diseases and other illnesses in San Francisco; and

WHEREAS after twelve years on the Superfund National Priorities List, the bulk of the Shipyard still has not been remediated and the Navy, the US EPA, and CAL EPA have agreed to repeated extensions of the schedules for the environmental remediation of the Shipyard set forth in the FFA, and despite numerous delays by the Navy, the US EPA, the enforcement agency under the FFA with the authority to assess penalties has never penalized the Navy despite their well established pattern and practice of evading, deferring and otherwise illegally ignoring the requirements of the FFA and environmental law; and

WHEREAS in 2000 it was only through the litigation of Arc Ecology, the Bayview Hunters Point Community Advocates, and the former Restoration Advisory Board Community Co-Chair that the Navy restarted its cleanup of Parcel B; and

WHEREAS the US EPA is currently allowing the Navy to disregard the schedule for the cleanup of Parcel B; and

WHEREAS the federal government is required by law to clean up the Shipyard, the Navy says it will cost too much money to do a thorough job and instead, plans to leave behind so much

contamination that it will increase the risk for cancer resulting from exposure to the property, requiring the construction of barriers and the restriction of future land uses; and

WHEREAS the Hunters Point Shipyard is located in a seismically active area, and identified in emergency response planning documents as particularly sensitive to issue of liquefaction;

WHEREAS liquefaction resulting from an earthquake has the potential for releasing toxic chemicals, radioactive materials and wastes, and hazardous wastes from the mechanical, engineered, or legal barriers created to protect humans and the environment from exposure to unremediated contamination left behind by an incomplete cleanup; and

WHEREAS the United States government should be held to the highest standards of accountability for its actions; and

WHEREAS the United States Navy has demonstrated that it is not committed to responsible site management or cleanup and many in the Bayview Hunters Point community believe the department's disdain for its duties in this neighborhood stems from the racial make-up of its residents; and

WHEREAS San Franciscans can, under federal law, express their preference in this debate. The National Contingency Plan, the guiding principles under which the cleanup plan is regulated, establishes community acceptance as one of its nine principle criteria for setting the cleanup standards for a toxic site; and

WHEREAS the Hunters Point Bayview community wishes the Hunters Point Shipyard to be cleaned to a level which would enable the unrestricted use of the property - the highest standard for cleanup established by the United States Environmental Protection Agency; and

WHEREAS the 87% of voters in the City and County of San Francisco in November 2000, opposed increasing the risk for cancer as a result of using lower standards for cleanup; supported the Hunters Point Bayview community's request that the federal government - through its Department of the Navy - allocate funds sufficient to clean the Shipyard to a level that will enable unrestricted use; and approved Proposition P urging that the initiative be adopted as City policy; and

WHEREAS a cleanup to unrestricted levels under Proposition P would (1) protect the community and future residents of the Shipyard from past pollution, and (2) allow the City to redevelop the Shipyard for the full range of uses set out in the Reuse Plan, without substantially shifting the cost of cleanup from the federal government to the City or making the reuse of the property economically infeasible; and

WHEREAS under Proposition P, environmental remedies that require future owners to maintain physical barriers to protect future occupants and the public from exposure to pollution left by the Navy should be used only when other solutions are technically impractical;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Board hereby declares that Proposition P, a copy of which is on file with the Clerk of the Board in File No. _________, and which is hereby declared to be a part of this Resolution as set forth fully herein, shall be the official policy of the City regarding the remediation of the Shipyard and sets forth a standard of remediation acceptable to the community. Any amendment to this policy shall require approval of the Board; and be it;

FURTHER RESOLVED, that by adopting Prop P as policy the Board formally urges the Navy to cleanup the Shipyard in a manner that is fully protective of public health and the environment, and does not rely on future owners to maintain barriers to protect future occupants and the public from exposure to pollution left by the Navy, unless other remedies are technically infeasible. In those instances where full compliance with the community acceptance criteria established in this ordnance cannot currently be achieved due to technical limitation, the remedy shall be considered a temporary interim solution until a final destructive or neutralizing technology has been developed where upon the Navy will return to the site and complete its remediation; and be it

FURTHER RESOLVED, that by adopting Prop P as policy, the Board urges [formally requests] the Navy to clean up the Shipyard in a manner fully consistent with the Reuse Plan, and without remedies that impose significant economic burdens on the community and future owners, or that make implementation of the Reuse Plan economically infeasible; and be it

FURTHER RESOLVED, that by adopting Prop P as policy, the Board expresses its dissatisfaction with the pace of cleanup and urges the Navy to fully fund the remaining cleanup of the Shipyard and complete the remediation in a time frame consistent with the schedule set out in the most recently updated version of the Federal Facilities Agreement; and be it

FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Board hereby urges the Navy, the United States EPA, and CAL EPA to implement and enforce the FFA and take all actions as may be necessary to cause the prompt remediation of the Shipyard in accordance with Prop P; and be it

FURTHER RESOLVED that the Board hereby directs the City and the Agency to establish and fund a community based, community led monitoring programs to ensure that the adjacent community is protected, neighborhood impacts are addressed, and that the remediation process for the respective Parcels are accomplished in a manner that is fully protective of human health and the environment; and be it

FURTHER RESOLVED that the Board directs the Department of the Environment to fully support and fund the efforts currently underway by San Francisco based and Bayview Hunters

Point neighborhood based public interest organizations to investigate and engineer a removal solution for the landfills contaminating Parcel E; and be it

FURTHER RESOLVED that the Board hereby directs all participating City Agencies including the Departments of Health, Environment, and Planning, City and District Attorney, and urges the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency to ensure full federal compliance with Prop P