<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;
charset=ISO-8859-1">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#ffffff">
<h6 class="uiStreamMessage"
data-ft="{"type":"msg"}"><span
class="messageBody">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.</span></h6>
<h1>Emails Reveal Alleged Cover-Up of Environmental Risks at Hunters
Point</h1>
<font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.baycitizen.org/development/story/alleged-cover-environmental-risks/">http://www.baycitizen.org/development/story/alleged-cover-environmental-risks/</a><br>
</font>
<h2>Federal and city officials announce investigations into alleged
collusion with developer</h2>
<div class="lightGrey small" style="margin-top: 10px;"> By <span
class="upper black"><a
href="http://www.baycitizen.org/profiles/john-upton/">John
Upton</a></span> on <span class="red">March 21, 2011 - 7:41
p.m. PDT</span> </div>
<div class="socialBar"><br>
<div class="right">
<div class="left" style="padding: 2px 0pt 0pt;"> <a
class="addthis_button"
href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250"> <img
src="cid:part1.09020605.00000702@aim.com" alt="Bookmark
and Share" style="border: 0pt none;" width="16"
height="16"> </a> </div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="media lead"> <a class="fancy_image"
href="http://media.baycitizen.org/uploaded/images/2010/7/hunters-point-shipyard/lightbox/2365903668_ae3ed2b47d_z.jpg"
title="Candlestick Park and the Hunters Point shipyard, as seen
from the peak of San Bruno Mountain April 14, 2008"><img
src="cid:part2.09020400.06080407@aim.com" alt="" width="235"
height="230"></a>
<div class="caption">
<div class="imageByline">Creative Commons/<a
href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/smi23le/2365903668/"
target="_blank">smi23le</a></div>
<div class="imageCaption">Candlestick Park and the Hunters Point
shipyard, as seen from the peak of San Bruno Mountain April
14, 2008</div>
</div>
</div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the San Francisco
Department of Public Health announced their investigations after
Bayview neighborhood activists on Monday <a
href="http://bayc.it/dDlV/" target="_blank">released emails</a>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>The new allegations come on top of <a
href="http://www.baycitizen.org/development/story/nonprofit-says-city-took-revenge-airing/"
target="_blank">claims</a> 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.</p>
<p>More recent examples of alleged collusion with Lennar released
Monday by the activists involved the federal government.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<br>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Jared Blumenfeld, EPA Region 9 director, promptly responded
Monday to the release of the emails.</p>
<p>“I take these allegations very seriously,” Blumenfeld said in a
statement. “Today, I initiated a comprehensive review of the
entire matter.”</p>
<p>Blumenfeld said the agency “stands by” the science and
conclusions published in a <a
href="http://yosemite.epa.gov/r9/sfund/r9sfdocw.nsf/3dc283e6c5d6056f88257426007417a2/0c75e85cfacd2c748825773c0080dab5%21OpenDocument"
target="_blank">June 2010 report</a> that found that
air-monitoring measures at the shipyard were protecting human
health.</p>
<p>The San Francisco Department of Public Health also announced that
it would conduct a review of the matter.</p>
<p>“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."</p>
<p>A review of the emails by the health department will be forwarded
to Mayor Edwin M. Lee, spokeswoman Christine Falvey said.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
</body>
</html>