It’s Time for Governor Newsom to Do the Right Thing!

“As mayor, Newsom focused on development projects in Hunters Point and Treasure Island.” –  Mayoralty of Gavin Newsom, Jan. 8, 2004 – Jan. 10, 2011 – Wikipedia

by Ahimsa Porter Sumchai MD

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom handed over a crisp $1 bill and the Navy handed over a key piece of the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard to San Francisco on Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2005, finally allowing the city to start developing one of its largest and last slices of vacant land. (See https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-First-shipyard-parcel-launched-2738973.php.) 

In March of 2004 Newsom had received an “unsettling letter from the Navy” suggesting the city’s plans to transform the 500-acre shipyard into a new neighborhood were in jeopardy. “It was not the letter we were expecting to receive,” Newsom is quoted as saying as he prepared to take a red-eye flight to Washington, D.C., on March 23, 2004, to meet with Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Installations and the Environment H.T. Johnson. 

According to Chronicle reporting, “City officials would not release the Navy’s letter and declined to reveal the Navy’s specific concerns.” 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch … The Hunters Point Shipyard Draft Final Historical Radiological Assessment (HRA) was being prepared for release in March of 2004 when Newsom received the letter he was not “expecting to receive.”

The HRA detailed the history of the use of radioactive materials from 1939 to 2003 and the Navy had come down with a crippling case of “cold feet” about the most contentious and enduring fact arising from Newsom’s leadership in building homes on a nuclear dump: that the property was unfit for human habitation when he paid a dollar for it!

It’s déjà vu all over again! In 2003, San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin wrote and championed City Ordinance 115-05. Environment Code Section 101 states, “All officers, boards, commissions and departments of the City shall implement the Precautionary Principle in conducting the City and County’s affairs.” 

The Precautionary Principle affirms San Francisco’s leaders’ and citizens’ duty to prevent harm through anticipatory action. “There is a duty to take anticipatory action to prevent harm.” – Hunters Point Community Toxic Registry 

“Where threats of serious or irreversible damage to people or nature exist, lack of full scientific certainty about cause and effect shall not be viewed as sufficient reason for the City to postpone cost effective measures to prevent degradation of the environment or protect the health of its citizens. Gaps in scientific research … will provide a guidepost for future research but will not prevent the city from taking protective action.” – Chapter 1: Precautionary Principle Policy Statement 

Community Right to Know is codified as a key element of the Precautionary Principle approach to decision making. The affected community has a right to know complete and accurate information about potential human health and environment impacts associated with the selection of products, services, operations or plans. Government businesses, community groups and the general public share in the duty to take anticipatory action to prevent harm.

“The deafening wind tunnel of silence emanating from the office of Gov. Gavin Newsom has become unbearable as the federal property he paid a dollar for accumulates a debt in liability due to mounting evidence of human exposure that is clear and convincing and beyond a reasonable doubt.” – Why I am calling for a Local Public Health Emergency in San Francisco? 

 California law governs a local health officer’s decision to declare or proclaim a public health emergency in order to exercise extraordinary protective power to respond.

The term emergency can be applied to any situation where urgent and immediate action is required to mitigate and prevent an adverse situation that threatens public health, property or the environment.

Under California Health and Safety Code, Section 101080, a regulation expanded to include any imminent or proximate threat of introduction of any contagious, infectious or communicable disease, chemical agent, biologic agent, toxin or radioactive agent, the local Health Officer or designee may declare a Local Public Health Emergency to exercise extraordinary power to respond to imminent and proximate threats to human health and safety. 

On Oct. 18, 2022, I submitted in live testimony before the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Hearing a local public health emergency declaration. Supervisor Shamann Walton shut down the microphone before I was able to complete a legally mandated statement under California Health & Safety Code Section 101080. 

Imminent and proximate threats to human health and safety were first reported on July 29, 2022, to the National Response Center as Incident Report 1342958. The Notification Report is attached. There has been no response to date from NRC or EPA to this notification. These actions are entered into deposition testimony in four civil actions filed in federal court. 

“As local health officer designee, operating a licensed medical facility located within the half mile perimeter of the federal Superfund System at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, its Parcel E-2 radiation contaminated industrial landfill, shorelines and campus of the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratories, I hereby declare, under California Health and Safety Code Section 101080, a Local Public Health Emergency within the one mile perimeter of the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Federal Superfund System, the active source of human exposures to radioactive heavy metals and cancer causing chemicals on the state of California Proposition 65 List.” – Ahimsa Porter Sumchai, MD, founder, director, principle investigator, Hunters Point Community Biomonitoring Program – Oct. 18, 2022 “Human Biomonitoring (HBM) is the only way to identify and quantify human exposure and risk, elucidate the mechanism of toxic effects and ultimately decide if measures have to be taken to reduce exposure.” – “Human Biomonitoring: State of the Art,” Jurgen Angerer et al. Int J Hug Environ Health May 2007

Professor of Law and Director of Golden Gate University School of Law Environmental Justice Clinic Helen H. Kang offered testimony before the AB 3121 Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals on Oct. 12, 2021: 

“My testimony will focus on the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood in San Francisco – which I’ll refer to as Hunters Point – to illustrate the role of systemic racism in magnifying pollution in the historically Black neighborhood. Specifically, I will draw the connection between environmental injustice and de jure segregation in San Francisco following the Great Migration. I will touch on redlining and zoning practices that further entrenched the government sponsored racial segregation in BVHP, resulting in concentrating Black residents into one of the most polluted areas in the nation. I will conclude by demonstrating how these injustices have been compounded in the last two decades, despite federal and state civil rights laws, through urban renewal and development practices.

While director of the clinic, Kang wrote in June 2022 how U.S. Attorneys’ Offices throughout our nation could take a meaningful role in enhancing environmental justice through proper planning and communication with communities most impacted by pollution and provision of funding and expertise. 

“To remedy the injustices of this past, the focus on environmental justice is too narrow a vision, while still fundamental. The solutions require a whole-of-government approach that incorporates reparations for these communities.” – Helen Kang, Professor of Law and Director, Environmental Law and Justice Clinic

On June 23, 2020, the law offices of Bonner & Bonner issued a press release on behalf of an estimated 8,000 plaintiffs enrolled in the Hunters Point Community Lawsuit after photo and video evidence was captured on June 17, 2020, by a Hunters Point hilltop resident who shrewdly filed a complaint with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. Images captured a backhoe deep soil excavator operating adjacent to the unfortified chain metal fence separating Superfund delisted Parcel A-2 from children’s schools, playgrounds and daycare centers. 

According to Charles Bonner, Esq., attorney for the people of Hunters Point: “The 8000 Plaintiffs have been joined by lawsuits filed by homeowners and hundreds of San Francisco police officers. Yet, even as these lawsuits are pending in federal court and even in the midst of this heavy, historic moment of a global pandemic, the mayor of San Francisco, first to order people to “shelter in place” to avoid mass contamination by coronavirus, along with the governor, who guardedly orders stages of business openings, clandestinely endorse a venomous contamination of the predominantly Black population of Hunters Point. Earthmovers were photographed just last week digging up dirt in the Shipyard, releasing radioactive particles into the surrounding community of schools and homes … and beyond.”

Saul Bloom, director of Arc Ecology, wrote in “Shame About the Shipyard: The History of Environmental Contamination and Management of the Hunters Point Shipyard” in an article published in the January 2002 issue of Verdict, the journal of the National Coalition of Concerned Legal Professionals:

“In San Francisco’s Hunters Point, 25,000 people live near a decommissioned naval base, including a 46 acre toxic waste dump and the remainders of the Navy’s Radiological Defense Laboratory. According to some, it is one of the most polluted sites in the world, possibly for a long time to come. Is the Navy fulfilling its responsibility to the residents … or simply laying waste and walking off?”

Bloom died of the most devastating type of brain cancer, Glioblastoma Multiforme, in August of 2016 after documenting the Navy misrepresented the extent of contamination of Drydock 4 by cancer-causing heavy metals and ionizing radiation in the legal journal Verdict in April of 2002. Bloom was a tenant at the site. Glial tumors are proven to be induced by exposure to radioactive and carcinogenic heavy metals. 

In a 2010 New York Times article, Bloom laid the blame squarely on Mayor Gavin Newsom for axing funding for Arc Ecology’s Third Street headquarters, Community Window on the Shipyard Cleanup. 

Bloom told the Times that Newsom cut Redevelopment Agency funding for the nonprofit in the aftermath of a dispute over health effects documented in a proposal in the redevelopment plan to build a highway coursing through the Yosemite Slough ecosystem near Alice Griffith public housing, Bayview Hills private homes, Bret Harte Elementary School and Candlestick Point State Recreation Area.

It was not the first time Newsom violated the City’s Precautionary Principle. In 2007, Newsom axed funding for BVHP environmental health programs using implementation of the citywide Universal Healthcare program as justification. 

Echoing from the graveyard of environmental injustice, Bloom spoke in the aftermath of the October 2000 Federal Injunction that shut down Astoria Metals at Drydock 4. 

U.S. District Court granted an injunction sought by San Francisco WaterKeepers and Arc Ecology to halt further use of Dry Dock 4 until the Navy’s tenant, Astoria Metals, “can demonstrate they can safely operate the facility.” The injunction came five years and four lawsuits after the environmental groups first sought to halt Astoria Metals’ ongoing violations of the Clean Water Act and numerous environmental regulations.

“We’ve shut down this polluter, but the problem remains the same: The Navy continues to disregard its responsibility for the environmental stewardship of the Hunters Point Shipyard. The reason the Navy’s tenants keep violating the law is that they know the Navy doesn’t care,” Bloom declared. “The misrepresentation theme is repeated throughout the second amended complaint.”

Validating Bloom’s claim the Navy misrepresented the extent of heavy metal contamination at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, in November of 2023, US District Court Judge James Donato summarizes key misrepresentations made by the Navy to SFPD in Kevin Abbey v USA: 

11. The Navy “negligently told the City that there was no history of any radioactive substances at the Building 606 Property.”

12. The Navy “told the City that SFPD could use the Building 606 Property without exposing SFPD employees to health risk from exposure to hazardous substances.”

13. The Navy “provided the City with a Finding of Suitability to Lease and property-specific environmental baseline survey results that included numerous material misrepresentations, false statements and failures to warn.”

The SFPD wrongful death lawsuit is one of four major legal actions before the federal courts against Tetra Tech. Officers, administrative and laboratory staff charge the United States of America Department of the Navy failed to warn the City and County of San Francisco about the hazardous substances used and released at HPNS that were a “substantial factor in causing the plaintiff’s acute symptoms and elevated risk of developing life-threatening cancers and other diseases.” 

Demonstrating excellence in investigative journalism, SF Chronicle writers Jason Fagone and Cynthia Dizikes detail, in the series “Dangerous Ground,” that several officers underwent medical evaluation by SFDPH sponsored occupational physicians who had clear signs and symptoms of environmental toxic exposure. None were tested for lead despite the fact lead, copper and petroleum products had been detected by SFDPH inspectors in Building 606 faucet water samples.

In Flint, Michigan, a judge dismissed criminal charges against former governor Rick Snyder on Dec. 12, 2023, stemming from the Flint water crisis and regional lead exposures after the state Supreme Court ruled indictments by a one person grand jury were invalid. On April 25, 2014, on order from the governor, Flint switched to the Flint River as its main water source. By May, residents filed complaints about the water’s color and smell and in August of 2014, E.coli intestinal bacteria were cultured from the water. 

Lead was detected by EPA and Flint City in January of 2015 and independent researchers detected high lead levels in Flint homes. Human biomonitoring for lead was conducted by pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha published in the American Journal of Public Health in December 2015. 

It was not until Dec. 14, 2015, that Flint’s mayor declared a public health emergency. On Jan. 5, 2016, Michigan Gov. Rick Synder finally declared a state of emergency … along with President Obama!

Snyder was charged with two counts of misconduct and willful neglect in the enterprise corruption and criminal cover up that exposed over 100,000 residents and children to lead and was blamed for nine deaths due to an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease. He left office in 2019.

Flint residents complained about the water’s smell, taste and appearance and reported rashes, hair loss and other related health concerns. Snyder did not acknowledge that lead was a problem until 17 months after the water switch. Michigan Health and Human Services Director Nick Lyon along with four others were charged with involuntary manslaughter. 

As of the publication of this article, justice for Flint families is long overdue. Since the water crisis began in 2014, Flint residents have yet to see a dime from the $626 million Flint Water Crisis settlement.

 The 1999 Community Survey is a population based survey of 249 households conducted by the Health and Environmental Task Force, a partnership between community leaders, the San Francisco Department of Public Health and the University of California San Francisco. Funded by the California Endowment and the San Francisco Foundation, the survey recorded community concerns about the disproportionate rates of environmentally linked diseases and the excess burden of environmental toxins in the neighborhood. Twenty-five years have passed since a community survey has been conducted in Bayview Hunters Point. Census data show the population has radically changed by redevelopment and the success of what James Dahlgren famously termed “Negro Removal.”

Funding for the Bayview Hunters Point Health and Environmental Task Force was cut in 2007 by Mayor Gavin Newsom, according to environmental health expert Betty McGee. McGee self financed the Oct. 1, 2023, African American Breast Cancer Conference sponsored by Concerned Network for Women.

“Welcome to Camp Dismal … where everyone has a cough … the rent is free … but the exposure risk is ‘too damn high!’”

Ramona Mayon is a 64-year-old disabled resident of the Bayview “Safe” RV Triage Center located at 500 Hunters Point Expressway. She signed a lease agreement over two years ago for a slot with a disabled placard. Mayon was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2021. It has not been treated as the direct result of the instability of her living situation.

Mayon is of European and Cherokee ancestry. She has published a virtual encyclopedia of blogs, articles, YouTube videos and photos documenting her plight at the “Safe” RV Triage Center where, between Aug. 21 and 26, Yerba Buena Contractors conducted an operation to excavate what the tenants call the “toxic mound,” a huge pile of soil, debris and fill abandoned immediately adjacent to her inoperable RV. 

Mayon is the target of harassment, retaliation, deception and an effort to evict her from her inoperable disabled RV because … she is photographing and recording the illegal actions that are occurring around her and exposing her to known toxins in Superfund soils. These toxins include arsenic, lead, mercury, cancer-causing PCBs and heavy metals. 

“There’s a bomb in my body!” – Ramona Mayon, tenant, Bayview RV Triage Center

Mayon and five of her neighbors, including two recently hospitalized for severe respiratory distress, have undergone urinary biomonitoring screenings conducted by the Hunters Point Community Biomonitoring Program beginning on Aug. 1, 2024. Mayon’s test results detect a profile commonly seen in residents and workers within the one mile perimeter of the Federal Superfund system at Hunters Point, Yosemite Slough and the Parcel E-2 landfill. Two of the most dangerous chemicals detected in elevated concentrations are cesium and thallium.

Mayon’s neighbor at the RVTC was urgently referred to the San Francisco General Hospital Emergency Room on Aug. 8, 2024, after a urinary biomonitoring test detected arsenic in “over the roof” concentrations. The laboratory extended processing time to verify the arsenic result. 

Heavy metal testing conducted by his primary care physician one month earlier detected arsenic and mercury in concentrations below toxic level. He underwent a third 24-hour biomonitoring test that will determine how much of the arsenic is organic – from eating rice and seafood – and how much of it is the inorganic arsenic documented to be present at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard and Yosemite Slough from use of toxic pesticides and rat killers.

Mayon referred another RV tenant for testing who canceled during an episode of severe respiratory distress triggered by the soil excavations conducted next to her RV.

Bay Area Air Quality Management District inspectors were called to the scene by Mayon. One inspector never showed up, claiming, “The City said it was just a pile of dirt by the side of the road.” A second inspector responded to a complaint on Friday, Aug. 23, and reported he was not able to gain entry to the RV site.

For the first time in history, the United Nations recognized that everyone, everywhere, has the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Resolutions from the Human Rights Council in 2021 and the General Assembly in 2022 – A/RES/76/300 – add this fundamental human right to the library of internationally recognized laws.

In 2024 the UNEA Environment Assembly released its report on the global poly crisis facing the modern world. That report identifies critical shifts, signals and potential disruptions caused by the relationship between humans and the environment. The top four signals include unforeseen impacts of harmful chemicals and materials. 

“Health Programs in Bayview Hunters Point and Recommendations for Improving the Health of Residents,” published on Sept. 19, 2006, by San Francisco Director of Health Mitchell H. Katz, MD, identifies in “Problem Description for Environmental Health”:

“In the United States, low-income and predominantly minority neighborhoods often have greater concentrations of hazardous conditions. These conditions include … contaminated soil and water, industrial emissions and exhaust from motor vehicles. The existence of these conditions reflect current and historic discriminatory land use decisions, population dynamics and economic forces. Bayview Hunters Point has a number of such potentially adverse environmental conditions.”

Katz’s “Health Programs in BVHP” also identifies Bayview Hunters Point as the community with the heaviest concentrations of industrial uses in San Francisco. “The Hunters Point Shipyard was placed on the federal government’s National Priorities List of the nation’s worst toxic sites in 1989. Parts of the shipyard remain contaminated and unusable because of chemical pollution, radioactive waste and neglect.”

The report notes the Hunters Point Power Plant emitted particulate matter and toxic air contaminants until its closure on May 15, 2006. Eighty percent of the city’s sewage is treated at the Southeast Water Pollution Control Plant in Bayview Hunters Poing. Cement production and diesel bus and vehicle storage are sited on Port property, adjacent to neighborhoods like Hunters View, where youth populations are as high as 39%.

“Health Programs in BVHP” documents a 10% asthma rate with 15.5% of children having asthma. The asthma rate for the general U.S. population is 5.6%. The rate of birth defects was 44.3 per 1,000 compared to 33.1 per 1,000 births for the city at large. The breast cancer rate is double that of San Francisco and one of the highest in the country.

The report concludes BVHP has a high concentration of substandard housing contributing to poor indoor air quality, high prevalence rates for asthma, cardiopulmonary diseases and preventable ER visits and hospitalizations. The 2006 report fails to acknowledge the impacts of industrial toxic air pollution including fine particulates and diesel particulates. 

Between 1998 and 2002, SFDPH Environmental Health implemented research and interventions in partnership with BVHP residents and community based organizations as the Health and Environmental Assessment Task Force to conduct community assessments. Funding for BVHP environmental health programs was axed under the budget priorities of Mayor Gavin Newsom, who signed the Healthy Choices Plan in 2007 to provide San Francisco residents with universal health care.

Environmental activists, community advocates and medical scientists continue to challenge public health and environmental regulators to apply their research, regulatory and planning resources to clean up contaminated landfills, prevent hazardous industrial uses, reduce diesel vehicle traffic and improve conditions in federally subsidized public housing. 

“The hazardous environmental conditions described above exist concomitantly with other forms of disadvantage that result in poorer levels of physical health and well being. Bayview Hunters Point is deficient in environmental health assists such as full service grocery stores and safe and inviting public parks. Research has conclusively shown that neighborhoods without such resources have higher rates of premature death and hospitalizations for chronic diseases,” Katz concludes in his 2006 report.

The Hunters Point Community Biomonitoring Program and its 501(c)(3) public benefit foundation has filled the void in environmental science research and public health advocacy in BVHP. HP Biomonitoring seeks benevolent support from the Board of Trustees of the Clarence E. Heller Foundation and Hirsch Philanthropic Partners for funding for fiscal year 2025-2026 to offset funding deficits incurred in the aftermath of an urgent disaster relocation in 2023, support general operational costs and launch Phase IV of the Hunters Point Community Toxic Registry. Community Window on Environmental Exposures proposes to revisit – after 25 years – the Hunters Point Biomonitoring Community Survey 2025.

SF Bay View Health and Environmental Science Editor Ahimsa Porter Sumchai, MD, PD, founder and principal investigator for the Hunters Point Community Biomonitoring Program, founding chair of the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Restoration Advisory Board’s Radiological Subcommittee and contributor to the 2005 Draft Historical Radiological Assessment, can be reached at AhimsaPorterSumchaiMD@Comcast.net. Dr. Sumchai is medical director of Golden State MD Health & Wellness, a UCSF and Stanford trained author and researcher, and a member of the UCSF Medical Alumni Association Board of Directors.

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