Cleanup Activities – Alameda Point Environmental Report

Chevron to clean up buried tar at old refinery site

Thanks to leadership at the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board (Regional Water Board), Chevron Corporation will be cleaning up residual petroleum at a former refinery site it once owned at Alameda Point.

The true extent of the contamination is unknown, which is why Chevron is first taking soil samples at 43 spots around the open field next to the self-storage business near the intersection of West Oriskany Avenue and Skyhawk Street. The investigation work was announced in a Work Notice/Fact Sheet from the Regional Water Board. Work began on May 15 and will continue until May 26. Their findings will provide the basis for a cleanup plan.

The petroleum cleanup site was put on the shelf until now because the Navy and the City figured that it was not causing any harm, therefore nothing had to be done until a developer purchased the lot. The Regional Water Board, which has sole regulatory authority over petroleum cleanup, instead wanted to close the books on this outstanding cleanup site.

Navy plan to destroy wetlands lacks scientific backing

Most Alamedans have read about the Navy’s plan for upgrading and expanding wetlands at Alameda Point where a regional park is planned. Unexpectedly, however, and behind closed doors, a single advisory staff member at a state agency halted the approved wetland expansion plan. He did so as work was already underway, and over 7,000 truckloads of soil had been delivered to upgrade the site. The controversy centers on the health risk that radium-226 luminescent paint waste artifacts may or may not pose to park visitors.

Alameda Post podcast highlights of the story – Friday, January 20, 2023.

Navy recruiting volunteers for Alameda Point cleanup board

The Navy is seeking new members to serve on its volunteer Restoration Advisory Board (RAB), which reviews and comments on environmental cleanup of the former Navy base. The Navy is also conducting an online community survey to better understand the interests and concerns about the environmental cleanup at the base.

Despite all the new construction at Alameda Point, there are still a variety of cleanup issues for the Navy and regulators to address. Some issues are new, some involve the long-term monitoring of sites that maxed out the active remediation methods and now rely on natural biological degradation of the remaining contaminant. And sometimes ongoing monitoring results show that the remediation has not sufficiently reduced a contaminant. This leads to follow-up work plans, which are vetted by the RAB.

Navy to lock down PFAS in groundwater with carbon

The Navy is ramping up plans to inject a state-of-the-art powdered charcoal product into PFAS-contaminated groundwater at Alameda Point, according to an October 13, 2022, cleanup document posted on the California Department of Toxic Substances Control website. The project will take place at a small area where Navy firefighters trained with PFAS-containing fire suppression foam next to the Oakland Estuary. The goal is to prevent the migration of PFAS into the Oakland Estuary.

Changing stories, ballooning costs cloud VA project at Alameda Point

Every couple years there is a new story from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) on why there are delays in building the veterans facilities at Alameda Point. Meanwhile, the costs have skyrocketed from $208 million to $395 million.

Two new stories emerged this summer, just as the VA is requesting another $128 million in the 2023 federal budget for the Alameda Point project.

Jet fuel cleanup relies on laundry detergent booster

Draining jet fuel from Navy planes, known as defueling, was a routine step before doing maintenance work on the planes. This defueling process at Alameda Point inadvertently contaminated groundwater at one location across the street from the Pottery Barn Outlet on West Oriskany Avenue. During February, the Navy’s cleanup contractor conducted a form of industrial-scale in-ground chemotherapy known as oxidation.

The injected chemical compound breaks apart the fuel molecules, turning them into harmless carbon dioxide, water, and oxygen. The main ingredient in this oxidation process is sodium percarbonate, the same active ingredient in OxyClean™ laundry whitener and stain remover, albeit with a different objective.

Navy Forced to Destroy Wetlands at Alameda Point

A recently released Navy document reveals that an implausible last-minute health-risk theory killed the Navy’s plan for upgrading and expanding wetlands at Alameda Point where a regional park is planned (“Navy To Create New Wetlands,” Jan. 3, 2019).

A 60-acre cleanup site, known as Site 32, was on track to include 15 acres of seasonal wetlands, along with a doubling of watershed drainage into the wetlands. The regulatory agencies overseeing cleanup — namely, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Regional Water Board, and Department of Toxic Substances Control — had signed off on the plan in 2018. But nothing has been done since the tons of clean soil for the project were delivered there in 2019.

A support agency, the CA Department of Public Health (CDPH), interjected claims that trees, other vegetation, and burrowing animals could compromise the proposed soil cover underneath the 15 acres of proposed new wetlands, exposing people and animals to radiological contaminants from paint residue on scattered objects that have been buried there for 65 years.