By Jacob Klein
As part of a long struggle to prevent housing from being developed on top of toxic waste sites, earlier in August the Sierra Club and other community and environmental justice groups filed suit against two state agencies over a proposed development project in South Richmond. The plan is for 4,000 residential units in a mixed-use development to be constructed on top of the heavily contaminated site of AstraZeneca’s former chemical manufacturing plant.
The toxic contamination comes from the Stauffer Chemical Company’s occupation of the site from 1897 to 1960. Stauffer primarily manufactured sulfuric acid at the site by roasting pyrite ores, and for decades the company dumped the iron pyrite cinders into the marsh nearby. Additional toxic releases resulted from Stauffer’s later manufacturing of fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides.
The Richmond community has sought the highest clean-up level for nearly twenty years. Due to many proposals for development in the early 2000s, a plan for clean-up was drafted by AstraZeneca and approved by the Water Board, the lead agency at the time. This partial clean-up plan called for ground floor parking and the installation of large fans to disperse the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that would seep up from the underlying soil. It included restrictions like preventing children from playing in the soil, not allowing any kind of edible gardening, and prohibitions on land use for hospitals, schools, or other community facilities.
Public outcry over the inadequate clean-up plan led to the lead agency being transferred to the state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), a subagency of the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA). A community advisory group of local volunteers was established in 2005 to discuss the Department’s clean-up efforts, and they have been following the serpentine path of shell companies and remediation plans ever since.
The most recent clean-up plan, approved by DTSC in 2019, ignores both the recent State of California guidance on sea level rise, and CalEPA’s protocol on the risks of VOCs; the plan only calls for removal of two percent of the 550,000 yards of contaminated soil, installation of a concrete cap, and in-situ chemical remediation.
“The site is open on the sides and bottom,” says Faris Jessa of Richmond Shoreline Alliance, “so a concrete cap won’t prevent the toxics from moving inland with sea level rise. We don't want a carcinogenic toxic soup coming up under our homes.”
In the beginning of July, DTSC approved a prospective purchaser’s agreement with the site’s new owners, HRP Campus Bay Property LLC, without adequate environmental review. In response, the Sierra Club and many other community partners jointly filed a lawsuit against DTSC and CalEPA, contending that both failed to consider current information on sea level rise and the health risks posed by toxic chemicals remaining at the site, and therefore violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
“What DTSC has done in Richmond is a travesty,” says nearby resident Lana Bolds of Mothers Against Toxic Housing (MATH), one of our co-petitioners. “We have no confidence that the partial clean-up they approved in 2019 will adequately protect my family, my neighbors, and future residents.”
Over the past two decades, the selected clean-up plan has remained largely unchanged, focusing on a concrete cap as means of protection, despite the fact that more information continues to come to light about the many ways toxins from this site could bleed out into our communities. Meanwhile, the land use restrictions on community facilities remain, which begs the question of why people would be allowed to live somewhere that’s considered unsafe for so many other functions.
“Building housing on this contaminated site would be an environmental injustice,” says our director, Virginia Reinhart. “While Richmond needs more affordable housing, we don’t want to put communities already overburdened by pollution in harm’s way because the responsible agency hasn’t analyzed all the risk factors. If the developer is committed to building residences at this site, the project must include the most rigorous clean-up available, rather than what DTSC has approved.”
Are you a Richmond resident or ally who supports clean-up of toxic land? Contact SF Bay Chapter organizer Dani Zacky at dani.zacky@sierraclub.org to get involved or for more information.
Photo credit: Protest sign at AstraZeneca site in Richmond by Virginia Reinhart.