Environmental Justice

By Rodney Hampton, Jr.

A toxic past, a sick people's present and a superfund condo future: what's next?

The Hunters Point Shipyard. PG&E. The Sewage Plant. Potrero Hill Peakers. Is any other district in San Francisco more of a toxic dumping ground than District 10? I can't imagine who else could make the claim. We need to be a lot more aggressive in our action plan for cleaning up this district. Child asthma, cancer, and chronic illness are a way of life for many residents of Bayview Hunters Point. Coincidence or correlation? The evidence is overwhelming.

Hunters Point Shipyard

In 1974 Hunters Point Shipyard was closed and so began one of the longest and most heartbreaking stories in all San Francisco history. It is a story of corruption, lies, distrust, and ultimately community health harm. Today as it stands the Hunters Point Shipyard is a toxic dump site, with asphalt and buildings above. The plan moving forward is to have a thriving community of thousands living above this dumpsite. A master planned community filled with homes, condos, apartment housing, and fields for children, it has the potential to be a 21st Century Love Canal. The Hunters Point Shipyard must be cleaned up by community standards before we begin construction on thousands of housing units on that site. The cleanup must be driven by community standards with heavy community oversight every step of the way. If full cleanup isn't a reality we don't let the SF Redevelopment Authority and private developers build ANYTHING!

PG&E

The Hunters Point Power Plant is slated to close in 2006 and the Potrero Power Plant to close approximately a year later. Hallelujah! Wait a second though. Wasn't the plant supposed to be closed in 2001? What happened? PG&E and the City of San Francisco delivered the latest in a long line of broken promises to the members of Bayview Hunters Point. The official reason for the plant's continued operation is to ensure that the City's power demands never go unmet. The consequence is that children and adults in the housing projects directly across from the power plant continue to suffer. Asthma, blood soaked pillows in the morning, pulmonary disease, skin disease, and cancer. Any question as to why? Not for many. Making sure those plants close is the bottom line for many. After it closes? What next? What does Mirant America (Owner of the Power Plant) plan to do with it once it has shut down? Beyond that we will need to focus our efforts and time on cleanup and restitution. Anything less would be an injustice along the lines of the one that we just detailed above.

Peakers

When the PG&E/Mirant Power Plant closes down (knock on wood) the question then becomes: what next? According to PG&E/Mirant the plan, they say, is to successfully site four small combustion turbines, or CTs, near the existing plant and at San Francisco International Airport. These city gas-burning generators, which would emit less pollution, would replace the energy currently produced by the outdated Potrero plant. The city has already taken years to designate sites for these combustion turbines known as "Peakers". Officials expect to place three around the existing Potrero plant, and another near the airport, but it will eventually fall on the Board of Supervisors to decide the fate of these projects. As a community we won't tolerate the continued operation of the Mirant Plant and the Peakers at the same time. Our health and safety mean too much to us to accept anything less.

The Future

From Hunters Point Shipyard, to PG&E, to the SF Municipal Sewage Plant, to Potrero Hill Peakers our district presents an ongoing environmental challenge. Beyond these challenges how do we empower everyday average citizens to become aware of the dangers around them? More importantly we must empower each other to become educated activists when it comes to environmental safety and public health concerns. As your Supervisor I promise to fight for the basic human rights of its residents. As someone who grew up across the street from the PG&E plant I understand the devastating consequences of ignorance and neglect. Let's work together to clean up District 10 and to lay this dirty legacy to rest.