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-risk... 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 Bookmark and Share <http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250> <http://media.baycitizen.org/uploaded/images/2010/7/hunters-point-shipyard/lightbox/2365903668_ae3ed2b47d_z.jpg> 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."
