Thread by @cbloggy

Friday evening's not just for news DUMPS—It's for news PUMPS!

Allow me to tease a story I’ve been working on for a few months, to be published Monday in Curbed SF.

You won't be disappointed… unless you planned to buy a home at San Francisco's largest redevelopment project.

Long story short: Almost half of the $1 billion cleanup of the Hunters Point shipyard, the single largest source of housing in San Francisco, may have been faked or is questionable enough to require a do over.

More than eleven years' of work that we're now told we can't trust.

Backstory: The former Navy shipyard at Hunters Point is one of the most polluted sites in the country. There’s a literal toxic waste dump there.

The Navy’s spent $1 billion of your money since the 1990s to clean it, so that a developer called FivePoint can build 12,000 homes.

The Navy hired a company called Tetra Tech to clean the shipyard and get it ready for housing. The company tested soil for contamination and removed dirty soil. Problem is, the company faked some of the cleanup.

modernluxury.com/san-francisco/…

Contamination at the shipyard includes scary-sounding radioactive waste, from ships blasted with hydrogen bombs, to piles of radium, to cesium spills and the results of tests at a secret nuclear warfare lab. SF Weekly won a Polk Award breaking that news. archives.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/f…

Tetra Tech’s bogus data “problem” put the redevelopment project on hold in 2016.

Last year, other contractors reviewed all of Tetra Tech’s data—and found that almost half of the company’s soil testing was “suspect” and might have been faked or manipulated, and should be redone.

The work at the shipyard Tetra Tech may have faked or manipulated ranges from 2005 to 2016. We’re talking thousands and thousands of soil samples, at San Francisco’s dirtiest toxic waste dump, at the city’s biggest and most important development project since the 1906 earthquake.

It's not at all clear what's going to happen or how long the review or redo of the testing at Hunters Point will take. Doesn't look good for @SFShipyard and its 12,000 planned units and more than 1 million square feet of office space.

That's your pre-weekend Cold War-era toxic waste dump-21st century neighborhood update.

Read the whole story, see the documents, and fear for the future on Monday when the story will be published in Curbed.

Source for this is a still unpublished review of bad contractor Tetra Tech's data. The Navy's supposed to release it publicly before a public meeting scheduled for Jan. 31.

Environmental activists and attorneys have filed a petition with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to have Tetra Tech's license to do this kind of work revoked. Tetra Tech is a frequent recipient of government contracts--even *after* it botched this big, big one.

Caveat: It could be much worse than that. The Navy is advised to retest work that may be "good," out of an abundance of caution.

Lastly: If you already own a home at @TheSFShipyard, you're OK--the toxic waste dump where this cleanup scandal is centered is down the hill, where the bars, restaurants, and other amenities you've been promised are supposed to go.

I should add: Everything I said above, sourced in a report the Navy's currently reviewing and has yet to release, is exactly what the insanely dedicated activists at Greenaction have been saying for years. greenaction.org

Oh, and: Your favorite kingmaker, former SF Mayor Willie Brown, has been traveling to China to find investors to sink their money into this toxic waste dump in exchange for EB-5 visas. @reveal's Matt Smith had that story: sfweekly.com/news/chairman-…

Final add for now: San Francisco's city family has been beyond loath to criticize the shipyard project, to the point of mendacity.

Case in point: In 2015, the @sfchronicle called the site "once-toxic," and the city's director of housing said it was a "former" superfund site.

This "once-toxic," former Superfund site is still toxic. And it's still a Superfund site. sfchronicle.com/science/articl…