Treasure Island Radiation Report: Navy Tried To Stifle Concerns

This article comes to us courtesy of The Bay Citizen.

By Matt Smith and Katherine Mieszkowski

As U.S. Navy officials readied a report this summer acknowledging a broader history of radioactive contamination at Treasure Island, they also sought to prevent California health officials from adding to the written record their concerns that the cleanup had been mishandled, according to internal emails.

The Navy acknowledged for the first time on Aug. 6 that the former Treasure Island Naval Station, where San Francisco plans to build a 20,000-resident high-rise community, was home to a repair and salvage operation for the Pacific fleet and that some of those ships could have been contaminated with radiation. The draft report also said that a school preparing sailors for nuclear warfare might have left behind radioactive residue.

The study came in response to regulators with the California Department of Public Health, who since 2010 have pressed for details after cleanup workers found radioactive waste in unexpected locations.

Internal emails show that health officials asked the military as recently as mid-May to step up radiation testing efforts. Military officials, meanwhile, pressed for health regulators not to present their concerns in writing.

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