Hunters Point: Remediation Before Redevelopment

Last year, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved the massive 702-acre redevelopment of the former Hunters Point Navy Shipyard and Candlestick Point including 10,500 housing units and a new 69,000-seat football stadium for the San Francisco 49ers. The construction is slated to be completed by the developer Lennar Urban Corporation and is projected to last more than twenty years. This caught my eye because for a decade spanning the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century a significant portion of my work was Brownfield redevelopment, and in 2007 I bought a two and a half year old Lennar subsidiary built home from Freemont Bank that had several flaws, no wax seals on the toilet, a failure to insulate the eves, attic vent covers installed over plywood with no vent holes, missing flashing, and long list of other small flaws that I have systematically corrected over the past few years. That was easy stuff that Lennar failed to get right. Lennar is not exactly the company I would trust to properly finish a remediation and verify its safety to man and the environment.

This past July the superior court of California stopped the early transfer of the shipyard. The court ruled that the City of San Francisco’s redevelopment plan for the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard failed to properly evaluate the environmental and health risks from allowing the Navy to transfer ownership of the contaminated Superfund site to the City and developer before the clean-up of the area is complete. http://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files/POWERTentativeDecision7-11-11.pdf

The 88-acre Parcel A which was the former military housing portion of the base transferred to the City of San Francisco in December 2004 after EPA approved the FOST (finding of suitability to transfer). During the investigation of Parcel A soil and groundwater, little contamination was found.

In court papers the City of San Francisco and the Lennar Corporation claimed there was no need for the Environmental Impact Report, EIR, to evaluate the environmental and health impacts of transferring the contaminated Superfund site to the City and the developer, Lennar, in advance of a completed, regulatory reviewed and approved clean-up. However, the court found that under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), the City has the responsibility to evaluate these impacts and I would heartily agree. The court also recognized that under early transfer the City and Lennar would become responsible for much of the cleanup as part of the redevelopment, a task which the EIR simply ignored. A large part of remediation is excavation, which is part of construction; however, it is essential that soils be properly tested, characterized and either reused or removed from site. To ensure a safe remediation the work must be through and methodical without cutting corners.

The Hunters Point Naval Shipyard was first established in 1869 on leased land. In 1940 in preparation for war, the Navy obtained ownership of the shipyard for ship building, repair and maintenance for the Pacific fleet. The war effort was the only focus. Fuels, solvents, and lead paint were routinely used, dumped and buried at the shipyard and its landfill. When atomic tests began in the south Pacific, radioactive waste was also disposed of on-site. From 1946 to 1969, the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory at Hunters Point decontaminated ships and studied the effects of nuclear weapons and disposed of waste on-site.

The Navy operated Hunters Point as a shipbuilding and repair facility from 1941 until 1976 shifting from surface ship repair to submarine servicing and testing after World War II. Between 1976 and 1986, the Navy leased most of the shipyard to Triple A, a private ship-repair company that was eventually charged with criminal violations for the illegal storage and disposal of hazardous waste on the property. In 1989, the shipyard was designated as a federal Superfund site under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA).The shipyard consists of 936 acres: 493 acres of land adjacent to the Bay and 443 under water within San Francisco Bay.
http://yosemite.epa.gov/r9/sfund/r9sfdocw.nsf/vwsoalphabetic/Hunters+Point+Naval+Shipyard?OpenDocument

The reality is that when a military base is assessed, the history of the base is studied so that potentially problem areas can be identified. Contaminated soil and groundwater are identified after testing in areas likely to be impacted. Many areas received regulatory closure after assessment if there was determined to be no significant impact on the area from historical use. To expedite investigation and cleanup, the site was initially divided into 6 parcels; A through F. Parcel F is the offshore parcel and A containing the military housing. During the investigation, sampling on Parcel E and groundwater sampling throughout the Shipyard resulted in the Navy proposing to subdivide Parcel E into parts; E and E2. Parcel E2 contains the landfill. As the investigation and remediation progressed more contamination was found. Utility corridors were found to be conduits of contamination and were separately designated. Parcel D was subdivided D-1, D-2, Utility Corridor 1 (UC-1), UC-2, and G. The remedial investigations and feasibility studies continue for Parcels C through G.

So far the Navy has excavated and removed large sections of soil and contaminated steam and fuel pipelines on Parcels C and D, and cleaned up several aboveground and underground storage tanks. The Navy has also conducted numerous removal actions to address soil and buildings contaminated with radiation. The Navy's largest removal action has been ongoing since 2006 and involves removing over 11 miles of sanitary and storm drain sewer lines site-wide to address low-level radiation that has been discovered throughout the system. Impacted soils are transported and disposed in a low-level radiological landfill.

In 2000, a subsurface landfill fire was discovered and burned for weeks after discovery. In 2002, it was discovered that landfill gas had migrated offsite to an adjacent property. The Navy constructed a barrier wall and trench to prevent future migration of the gas and installed an active landfill gas extraction system to extract methane and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), treat the VOCs and vent the methane (a greenhouse gas).The Navy has conducted extensive removal actions to address areas of metal debris on Parcel E, buried radium dials also on Parcel E, PCBs on Parcel E/E2 and metal slag on Parcel E, but proposes to cap a significant portion of the land fill leaving the trash and materials in place. Even with plans to leave a significant portion of the landfill in place along with contaminated groundwater plums contained on site, the soil excavation is projected to continue until 2017 based on volume of soil to be excavated, sorted, treated, disposed of off site or returned to the site.

Wastewater Treatment in San Francisco and the SF PUC

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) is a department of the City government that provides: Regional and local water, Wastewater (collection, treatment and disposal), and Power. I spoke with Idil Bereket, Public Relations Officer for the Wastewater division to gain a fuller understanding of the wastewater programs after seeing the “only rain down the drain” signs around the city and chatting up an employee testing wastewater at Saint Francis Hospital.

Treating waste water and collecting storm water are essential city services, but this function also requires that the SFPUC work to educate the public to prevent pollution and limit the trash, contaminants and waste that enters the system. The SFPUC operates and maintains 993 miles of combined sewers, which collect sanitary sewage from toilets and drains in apartments, homes, schools, offices and other businesses, and street runoff throughout the city. Most of San Francisco operates under a combined sewage storage and treatment system. That means for most of the city, all sanitary sewage and stormwater is collected into the same pipes and catch basins and treated in the three treatment plants. There are a few areas of the city that were developed with a separate stormwater sewage system and those are controlled and discharge separately to the Bay.

The SFPUC operates three twenty-four hour a day waste treatment plants and one occasional plant that is used during rainy weather when the combined system collects more water. San Francisco is unusual in that it operates with a combined sewer system that collects and treats both wastewater and stormwater in the same system. Though stormwater is relatively clean, it does wash street pollutants into the sewer system that should not be directly released into the Bay or the Pacific. However, the processes needed to address street pollutants-motor oil, pesticides, metals, dirt and litter are different from the processes to separate toilet paper and sewage, and the pollutants of concern are different. That means the rain that runs off streets and buildings gets treated at the wastewater treatment plants just like sanitary sewage. That is expensive. Rain water is relatively clean and could be treated with a filter and oil and grease separators, but combining the stormwater with the sewage creates a large volume of water that goes through the wastewater treatment plants.

The smallest of the waste treatment plants is the Treasure Island plant that serves only Treasure Island and will be ignored for the rest of the discussion. The two major waste water treatment plants that serve the city of San Francisco are the Southeast Water Pollution Control Plant in Bayview built in 1950’s and the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant built in 1993. On a typical day the Southeast Water Pollution Control plant treats about 80% of the wastewater in the city. On a dry day the San Francisco combined sewage system treats about 80,000,000 gallons a day of sanitary sewage, during storms the treatment load can increase to up to 500,000,000 gallons of combined sewage. That six fold increase in water volume is more than can be handled by using the North Point Weather Treatment Plant.

What makes the system so expandable is the system of storage/transport boxes. The storage/transport boxes are huge underground rectangular tanks or tunnels that surround the City, the SFPUC describes it as a moat, a fitting image. The storage/transport boxes catch the combined stormwater and sewage as it overflows the sewer system, but before it reaches the shoreline of the Bay or Pacific Ocean. The storage/transport boxes have a total storage capacity of 200,000,000 gallons and hold stormwater and sewage for later treatment at wastewater treatment plants. If the capacity of the storage/transport boxes should be exceeded, the wastewater including sewage would be released into the Bay or the Pacific Ocean.

The storage/transport boxes provide the fist step of treatment, settling and screening of floatable materials inside the boxes. This step is equivalent to primary treatment that takes place at the wastewater treatment plants. When wastewater reaches the wastewater treatment plant, it passes through a screen used to remove large objects and debris. (You would not believe some of the debris which gets into the system despite the “only rain down the drain” signs.) Then the wastewater enters large settling tanks where heavier solids settle to the bottom, and floatables like oil and grease are scraped off the top.

Secondary treatment is bacterial digestion of organic waste. This process is enhanced by using blown oxygen to increase microorganism population enhancing the speed that the bacteria consume organic material in the wastewater. Afterwards, the wastewater is put into a second round of settling tanks where the microorganisms are separated from the purified water. Treated wastewater, is disinfected before being discharged into the San Francisco Bay from the Southeast Plant and into the Pacific Ocean from the Oceanside plant where the high salt concentration and cold temperatures help to kill any remaining bacteria. Effluent at North Point Facility is also disinfected before being discharged into the San Francisco Bay.

Sludge separated from wastewater during primary and secondary treatment is further processed on a “Gravity Belt Thickeners” to remove more water from the sludge. The thickened sludge is pumped into enclosed digester tanks. It is mixed for 15-25 days and heated at a constant temperature of 95 degrees Fahrenheit to allow anaerobic bacteria to break down remaining organic material in the sludge. Once treated, sludge is transformed into bio-solids. San Francisco produces 160,000,000 pounds of bio-solids every year that are recycled as fertilizer. The methane given off by the anaerobic bacteria is captured and used to power the system heaters.

The wastewater treatment system is not designed to do any more than screen out trash, skim off scum and grease and use bacterial action to digest toilet paper and bio-solids. Pharmaceuticals, pesticides, hydrocarbons and anything else the residents can think to pour down the drain or dump into the storm drains will either clog the system or be released into the Bay or Ocean. Cooking grease hardens when it cools in the sewer pipes. This can constrict the sewer pipes or form blockages that increasing pressure and often causing sewer pipe failure. Pharmaceuticals pass through the system untreated and pollute the Bay and estuary habitat. Pesticides and other chemicals can damage the bacterial habitat preventing adequate treatment of the sewage or be released to the Bay. As the SFPUC points out with their educational campaign, water pollution prevention begins with using your toilet to dispose of the three “P’s” (do you really need me to tell you?), recycling cooking oil, and remembering that everything that goes down the drain goes right out into the bay. A toilet is not a trash can and neither is a storm drain. To optimize the operations of the wastewater system at least expense, utilize rain barrels and cisterns to reduce overall flow to the system, and only allow the intended wastewater to enter toilets and drains and only rain should go down the stormwater drains.

The SF PUC has labeled all 23,000 stormwater drains to remind citizens not to use the storm drains as a trash can or disposal drains. According to Idil Bereket of the SFPUC, these little reminders have been effective in reducing dumping into the storm drains. In addition, the SF PUC runs SF Greasecycle, a citywide project that collects used cooking oil primarily from restaurants and converts it to bio-fuel for biodiesel vehicles. In the past year over 124,000 gallon of used cooking oil were collected and recycled. There is a small program that collects consumer generated cooking oil at several retail outlets and at holiday drop off points. Finally, the Rainwater Harvesting Program, subsidizes rain barrels and cisterns for city residents. Last year they sold 38 cisterns and 192 rain barrels. This diverted over 21,000 gallons of rainwater from the combined sewer system.

Solar Power Incentives In San Francisco- Making the System Work for You

This winter I have shared the journey that an acquaintance and her family have traveled to install a solar photovoltaic system on their home in San Francisco. Though the specifics like orientation, tilt, shading etc. of an installation will have a significant impact on the solar power produced by the system, all things being equal, a system installed in San Francisco will produce 13% more electricity than the same system installed in the Virginia/Maryland and Washington DC area. I actually thought the difference would be greater, but I used the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's PVWatts calculator to determine the energy production and cost savings of grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) energy system in both locations holding everything else constant to calculate that difference.

However, it is unlikely that everything else is the same. Andy Black, author of “Economics of Solar Electric Systems for Consumers” Payback and other Financial Tests,” says that systems design factors, like air flow, orientation and tilt, system reliability due to wiring and quality of components, and shading can be far more important factors in solar photovoltaic system production than weather and temperature across the United States. The specifics of an installation that cannot be (easily) changed like the orientation of a home, height of the roof, and shading from other buildings, trees, and roof vents and the quality of the installation design can impact how much power a system will produce.

The overall return from installing a solar photovoltaic system is dependent on the cost of the system, the cost of power and how much power the system produces. Solar PV systems and solar thermal systems for heating water will not save enough from electric (or gas) bills to make them financially viable in a homeowner's lifetime. The economic argument for installing solar panels is based on financial incentives provided by the government directly and through utilities to make the cost palatable. Even with the high cost of electricity in San Francisco, incentives are necessary. In San Francisco where PG&E (Pacific Gas and Electric) just made significant changes in their retail electric rates lowering the effective rates to homeowners the electric rates are charged on a tier basis, the fist tier is $0.11877, the second tier is $0.13502 and the third tier is $0.29824. (Previously, there had been a 5 tier system topping out at just about $0.50 per kilowatt!).

Based on the size of the system, its location, and the new lower electric rates in San Francisco, my acquaintance’s system should have a return of about 10-12% after rebates and incentives (depending on the federal tax rate applicable). The incentives are very important. Currently, PG& provides an incentive of only $0.35 per watt. This is a very small incentive compared to the ones I was used to seeing in Maryland, Virginia and Washington DC. However, there are other incentives available for San Francisco city residents. To encourage more installations of solar power in San Francisco, the City, though a program at the Public Utilities Commission, PUC, is offering incentives to residential power customers based on their income and location and not tied to the size of the system installed. These incentives can be quite generous, depending on your circumstances.

The basic incentive from the PUC available to everyone is $2,000. However, if you live in Bayview, Hunterspoint, Portola, Potero Hill or Dogpatch neighborhoods or are a low income customer enrolled in CARE or CALHome you are eligible for an additional $1,000. In addition, there is a $750 incentive for using a San Francisco based installer where the market is quite competitive. Finally, there is a $7,000 incentive for low income households. In San Francisco a low income household may have unlimited equity in their homes, but the annual household gross income must be below $86,000 for a four person household (senior citizens on social security would qualify). The income guidelines are based on household size so check this link to see if you qualify. Typically, in the San Francisco market, the incentives are applied for and issued to the installer and they bear the risk of complying with the system requirements and the burden of completing all the paperwork. However, the customer will still need to pay a significant amount of cash to have system that will eliminate most of their electric bill. Note, that only the PG&E incentive is tied to the size of the system installed so that a small system installed on a small home in the “Avenues” would be relatively less expensive due to the pricing structure of the incentives.

The San Francisco customer would have to apply for the federal tax credit themselves, though the federal form is simple, they are advised to talk to a tax professional since strategies for utilizing the tax credit are situation specific. A tax credit is more valuable than an equivalent tax deduction because a tax credit reduces tax dollar-for-dollar, while a deduction only removes a percentage of the tax that is owed. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 extended the tax incentives under the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPACT) and eliminated the limit on the credit and extended the tax credit until 2016.

Solar Photo Voltaic panels are one of the least cost-effective ways of reducing your use of non-renewable resources, but with the smart utilization of incentives they can be cost effective. We are all subsidizing the cost. This is accomplished by tax credits, state, utility and other rebates, and renewable energy credits or payments. Without net metering to serve as a 100% efficient battery to store excess energy when produced would require too large a system. Even with rebates, tax credits and incentives like tiered electric rates and the ability to sell renewable energy credits it would still make no sense to install a system. Even with all these incentives and net metering there is still a significant cash outlay and most if not all conservation measures have a higher economic return and should be done first. DSIRE, the database for state incentives for renewable energy, allows you to find all the renewable energy and energy conservation incentives for your location. Check it out.