Page One

State officials Thursday afternoon approved a developer’s plans to dredge marshland at the edge of a highly polluted Richmond site, though some neighbors remain deeply concerned about possible effects to neighboring lives and property. 

Cleanup of Stege Marsh on the South Richmond shoreline is mandated as part of the cleanup of the site of the former Zeneca chemical manufacturing complex, where large quantities of contaminated soil have already been buried under a clay soil cap. 

Work could begin immediately under the approval issued by Bruce F. Wolfe, executive officer of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board. 

Cherokee-Simeon Ventures, a partnership of a Marin County developer and a Colorado firm specializing in developments on rehabilitated toxic sites, is proposing a 1,330-unit residential complex of high-rise, mid-rise and townhouse condos plus low-rise loft apartments adjacent to the marsh. 

Tuesday morning’s meeting in the second-floor conference room of an office building on the site attracted a standing-room-only crowd, with large contingents from state regulators, the developers and concerned neighbors. 

While the marsh cleanup was a foregone conclusion, the residential complex is another matter entirely, said Stephen J. Morse, assistant executive officer for the Water Quality Control Board. 

“We’re not anywhere close to discussing homes on the site,” he said. 

During the century it operated until its closure in 1997, the 40-acre site—located west of I-580, southwest of Meade Street, near the Bayview Avenue exit—housed plants producing industrial and agricultural chemicals. 

At the site, Stauffer Chemical refined sulfur from iron pyrite, adding high levels of contaminants to the soil, and Zeneca, Inc., added additional noxious compounds from the production of nitric acid, fungicides, herbicides, insecticides and a potpourri of other compounds. 

“My understanding is that there are arsenic concentrations on this site,” said Contra Costa County Health Director Wendell Brunner. 

“This site’s got everything,” replied Morse. 

Curtis Scott, chief of the Regional Water Quality Control Board’s Groundwater and Waste Containment Division—the lead agency on the site cleanup—said 98 percent of the site remediation had been completed, 90 percent of it before Cherokee-Simeon bought the property. 

Cleanup of the marsh adjacent to the bay has been mandated because the soils contain levels of metals that, while judged safe for humans, have proven harmful to birds and other creatures living at the interface between land and sea. 

The polluted fill will be replaced by certified clean soil which is now being trucked into the site, Scott said. 

Because of shorebird nesting seasons—including that of the endangered clapper rail, a bird which has been observed on the site—the timeline for marsh excavation is limited to a short window in the fall. 

The excavated muck would be stored on the project site until spring, when it would be shipped out after drying sufficiently to enable on-site compacting, said Bill Carson, a specialist for Emeryville-based LFR Levine Fricke, the environmental clean-up firm conducting the site restoration. 

Many site neighbors were frustrated that the meeting had been called on short notice and scheduled during the workday, and all of them were concerned about surface dust blowing off the muck piles and onto their property. 

Their immediate concerns centered on wind-blown dust from the drying surface of the muck heaps reaching their businesses on property adjacent to or near the site. 

Cecil Felix, the water board’s project manager for the cleanup, said monitoring stations, one of them a mobile unit which could be repositioned as conditions warrant, would detect any wind-blown dust leaving the site and notify staff by pagers. 

Other sensors monitor for volatile organic compounds, a class of chemicals that includes some particularly toxic compounds. 

Work would be shut down at the first visible sign of dust leaving the site, he said. 

In the event they spotted blowing dust, neighbors asked what they could do to spark a shutdown.  

“We have the authority to do that,” Felix said. “We’re not that far away. We can make a trip down here,” from the board’s Oakland office and shut down work. 

How many calls would it take to provoke a shutdown, asked Jesse Kray, whose Kray Cabling Inc. is adjacent to the site on 49th Street. “What is the actual process? Is it one call and you’ll be out here? Two calls? Three calls?” 

“It shouldn’t be the responsibility of people living around here to do the monitoring,” said Dr. Brunner. 

Scott finally acknowledged that the board usually acts after five calls have been received. 

“Please give me a call if you have problems,” said Russ Pitto, head of Simeon Properties. 

“We’re looking for success here,” said Morse. 

The highest ranking state official on the scene was Rick Brausch, assistant secretary for external affairs of the California Environmental Protection Agency, which has overall supervision of the agencies involved in the cleanup. 

“They are asking you as a regulatory agency to give them some assurance that measures are in place to monitor the project and that you will shut things down if there is any risk of exposure,” Brausch interjected. 

Scott assured him that such was the case. 

Shortly before he left the meeting, health director Brunner acknowledged that “things have certainly moved forward since July in terms of responses form regulatory agencies, but it’s clear that there’s more work to do. 

“It will be helpful for future meetings for the regulatory agencies to lay out what’s there on the site and what material they’re moving out. The University of California did that,” he said, adding that “a lot of the questions raised here are absolutely clearly appropriate.” 

Pollution levels are even worse in marshland on the UC Berkeley Field Station to the north of Campus Bay, said Scott, describing them as “very, very huge.” The university site includes portions which also housed Zeneca plants. 

The same neighbors who had harsh words for Cherokee-Simeon joined Brunner in singing the praises of the university, which has conducted tours of the station, pointing out environmental hot spots. 

“The university was very forthcoming, very straightforward. They gave me a greater comfort level than I’ve had over here,” said one neighbor. “Sherry Padgett (a Richmond resident active in opposing the development) and other people in this community have had to fight tooth and nail every time we finally get information, and every time we get it, we find out that there’s more information behind the information and we have to fight to get that.” 

“The residents of Marina Bay have received nothing,” said Dr. Claudia Carr, a resident of Marina Bay, a residential community to the northwest. A UC Berkeley Professor of Environmental Science, Policy & Management, Carr has been active in the movement challenging and the handling of the cleanup. Like many others, she opposes the residential project. ª