[Sustain] Emails Reveal Cover-Up of Environmental Risks at Hunters Point

[Eric Brooks]

            Emails show EPA, SF Health Department, and Lennar
            Corporation colluded to manipulate public presentations in
            order to conceal serious toxic construction project hazards
            from the public and elected officials.


  Emails Reveal Alleged Cover-Up of Environmental Risks at Hunters Point

http://www.baycitizen.org/development/story/alleged-cover-environmental-risks/


    Federal and city officials announce investigations into alleged
    collusion with developer

By John Upton <http://www.baycitizen.org/profiles/john-upton/> on March 
21, 2011 - 7:41 p.m. PDT

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Creative Commons/smi23le <http://www.flickr.com/photos/smi23le/2365903668/>
Candlestick Park and the Hunters Point shipyard, as seen from the peak 
of San Bruno Mountain April 14, 2008

Federal and city officials announced Monday they would investigate new 
allegations that government staff colluded with developer Lennar Corp. 
to cover up health risks associated with the redevelopment of the 
Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the San Francisco 
Department of Public Health announced their investigations after Bayview 
neighborhood activists on Monday released emails <http://bayc.it/dDlV/> 
from 2006 to 2009 in which officials asked the developer and its 
consultants to help draft public statements about the safety of dust 
kicked up by the controversial building project.

San Francisco's Board of Supervisors approved much of the sprawling 
redevelopment plan last year after receiving assurances from federal and 
local officials that it was safe, despite toxic compounds, radioactive 
contamination and naturally occurring asbestos in swaths of the 
shuttered shipyard's soil. A 75-acre outlying chunk of the project area 
was transferred to Lennar in 2005, but the construction of homes has not 
yet begun.

"I'm sure you will also want to change my wording on how I portray the 
problems, lack of monitors, etc.," San Francisco Department of Public 
Health official Amy Brownell told Lennar employees in an Oct. 13, 2006 
email while preparing for a safety-related presentation. "Go ahead and 
change any way you want. I may change some of it back but I'm willing to 
read your versions."

Several months later, department official David Rizzolo told Brownell 
and another colleague that he did not want to obtain any more data on 
worker exposures to asbestos.

"It seems to me that the available facts are on our side, so we should 
stay away from trying to create more data," Rizzolo wrote in the Jan. 
19, 2007 email. "More data might not help us. We can talk more about 
this directly."

The new allegations come on top of claims 
<http://www.baycitizen.org/development/story/nonprofit-says-city-took-revenge-airing/> that 
former Mayor Gavin Newsom's administration helped strip a 
state-administered environmental communications contract away from a 
local nonprofit that publicly criticized aspects of the redevelopment 
project.

More recent examples of alleged collusion with Lennar released Monday by 
the activists involved the federal government.

"I'm searching for a way to justify that the development is acceptable 
without getting into details of risk assessment," EPA Region 9 Remedial 
Project Manager Mark Ripperda told a Lennar consultant in a Nov. 3, 2009 
email regarding dust that was stirred up the developer's grading 
operations. "I'm open to any written narrative or bullet list that you 
think might work."

Work shutdowns occur when airborne asbestos levels at the construction 
site are unsafe. Lennar was fined $515,000 by air regulators in 2008 for 
engaging in practices that allowed dust to blanket surrounding 
neighborhoods.


"I prefer to keep our message as simple as possible and stay away from 
health assessment and from shut-down days," Ripperda wrote in an Oct. 
28, 2009 email to the same consultant, Iris Environmental.

The U.S. EPA and San Francisco have repeatedly stated that airborne 
asbestos levels in the surrounding low-income neighborhoods were safe, 
but the emails released Monday raise questions about the veracity of 
those statements.

Jaron Browne, a leader of the loose-knit coalition of activist groups 
that secured and released the emails, said the correspondence 
demonstrates a "consistent pattern where the regulators were repeatedly 
running their messaging and their communications with the community 
first by Lennar."

The groups, organized as the SLAM Coalition of Bayview Hunters Point 
Community Organizations, called on the FBI and the mayor's office to 
investigate allegations of public corruption associated with the 
redevelopment project.

Two nonprofit members of the coalition, POWER and Green Action, are 
suing to overturn certification of the redevelopment project's 
environmental impact report, arguing that the document didn't properly 
consider health impacts from soil pollution at the site.

Jared Blumenfeld, EPA Region 9 director, promptly responded Monday to 
the release of the emails.

"I take these allegations very seriously," Blumenfeld said in a 
statement. "Today, I initiated a comprehensive review of the entire matter."

Blumenfeld said the agency "stands by" the science and conclusions 
published in a June 2010 report 
<http://yosemite.epa.gov/r9/sfund/r9sfdocw.nsf/3dc283e6c5d6056f88257426007417a2/0c75e85cfacd2c748825773c0080dab5%21OpenDocument> 
that found that air-monitoring measures at the shipyard were protecting 
human health.

The San Francisco Department of Public Health also announced that it 
would conduct a review of the matter.

"All concerns regarding our regulatory responsibilities are taken very 
seriously," Health Officer Tomás Aragón said in a brief statement. "We 
will prepare a response when we have had sufficient time to study these 
issues."

A review of the emails by the health department will be forwarded to 
Mayor Edwin M. Lee, spokeswoman Christine Falvey said.

Lennar Urban Vice President Kofi Bonner said that residents of the 
Bayview and Hunters Point neighborhoods can be assured that levels of 
asbestos at the project are not harmful.

"Nothing in these emails suggests any data was hidden, altered or 
covered up," Bonner said in a statement. "Lennar has cooperated and 
continues to cooperate with regulators to minimize exposure to this 
naturally occurring material. We listen and respond when regulators 
require us to act or seek our cooperation."

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