EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been updated to reflect the extent to which the Navy’s plan has been released to the public.
The Navy just released details of its plan to retest the Hunters Point Shipyard for radiation. The Navy found its cleanup contractor, Tetra Tech, manipulated radiation data. The Navy has to redo the work, and on Wednesday, officials released parts of their new plan to the public.
The plan calls for the resampling or rescanning of all the areas that Tetra Tech touched on a part of the shipyard known as “Parcel G.” That includes the inside of six old buildings and the soil from sewer and storm drain trenches. Crews will take soil samples and test them for radiation in a lab. Dozens of community members criticized the Navy’s original plan to retest Parcel G. The Navy says it listened to those concerns and increased the number of soil samples it would collect from 4,500 to 6,900.
“That has been changed significantly I would say both to regulatory comments as well as community concerns,” said Derek Robinson, the Navy’s environmental coordinator for the Hunters Point Cleanup. “One of our primary focuses is to make sure the community knows the work we are doing. We are trying to be as transparent, we’re 100 percent transparent – and that’s what tonight is about.”
The Navy held an open house Wednesday evening to explain the updates to the plan. You can view parts of the Navy’s work plan here.
The Navy says it will release its full plan by the end of the month. Officials hopes to begin the fieldwork this winter and complete it by summer. The plan calls for independent oversight by a third party. Tetra Tech has continued to say it stands by its cleanup work at the shipyard.
