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The Hunters Point Naval Shipyard was a
United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...
shipyard A shipyard, also called a dockyard or boatyard, is a place where ships are built and repaired. These can be yachts, military vessels, cruise liners or other cargo or passenger ships. Dockyards are sometimes more associated with maintenance a ...
in
San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
,
California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
, located on of waterfront at Hunters Point in the southeast corner of the city. Originally, Hunters Point was a commercial shipyard established in 1870, consisting of two
graving dock A dry dock (sometimes drydock or dry-dock) is a narrow basin or vessel that can be flooded to allow a load to be floated in, then drained to allow that load to come to rest on a dry platform. Dry docks are used for the construction, maintenance, ...
s. It was purchased and built up in the late 19th and early 20th century by the
Union Iron Works Union Iron Works, located in San Francisco, California, on the southeast waterfront, was a central business within the large industrial zone of Potrero Point, for four decades at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. ...
company, later owned by the
Bethlehem Shipbuilding Company Bethlehem Steel Corporation Shipbuilding Division was created in 1905 when the Bethlehem Steel Corporation of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, acquired the San Francisco shipyard Union Iron Works. In 1917 it was incorporated as Bethlehem Shipbuilding Co ...
and named Hunters Point Drydocks, located at
Potrero Point Potrero Point is an area in San Francisco, California, east of San Francisco's Potrero Hill neighborhood. Potrero Point was an early San Francisco industrial area. The Point started as small natural land feature that extends into Mission Bay ...
. Known as "The World's Greatest Shipping Yard", President Theodore Roosevelt trusted his
Great White Fleet The Great White Fleet was the popular nickname for the group of United States Navy battleships which completed a journey around the globe from December 16, 1907 to February 22, 1909 by order of President Theodore Roosevelt. Its mission was t ...
of battleships to be serviced at Hunters Point in 1907 according to historical records. The shipyard was purchased by the Navy in 1940, a year before the
attack on Pearl Harbor The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, j ...
. It began operations the next year as the San Francisco Naval Shipyard, and operated until 1974 when it was deactivated and renamed Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. Used commercially for a time, in 1986 it was taken over by the Navy again as the home port of the USS ''Missouri'' battlegroup, under the name Treasure Island Naval Station Hunters Point Annex. The base was named redundant as part of the
Base Realignment and Closure Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) is a process by a United States federal government commission to increase United States Department of Defense efficiency by coordinating the realignment and closure of military installations following the end o ...
effort in 1991, and was closed permanently in 1994. Since then the site has been part of a
superfund Superfund is a United States federal environmental remediation program established by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA). The program is administered by the United States Environmental Pro ...
cleanup effort to remediate the remains of decades of industrial and radiological use. Parcels have been sold as they were remediated, mostly for
condominium A condominium (or condo for short) is an ownership structure whereby a building is divided into several units that are each separately owned, surrounded by common areas that are jointly owned. The term can be applied to the building or complex ...
development.


History

The original docks were built on solid rock. In 1916 the drydocks were thought to be the largest in the world. At over 1000 feet in length, they were said to be big enough to accommodate the world's largest warships and passenger steamers. Soundings showed an offshore depth of 65 feet. During the early 20th century much of the Hunters Point shoreline was extended by
landfill A landfill site, also known as a tip, dump, rubbish dump, garbage dump, or dumping ground, is a site for the disposal of waste materials. Landfill is the oldest and most common form of waste disposal, although the systematic burial of the waste ...
extensions into the
San Francisco Bay San Francisco Bay is a large tidal estuary in the U.S. state of California, and gives its name to the San Francisco Bay Area. It is dominated by the big cities of San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland. San Francisco Bay drains water from a ...
. Between
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
and the beginning of
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
the Navy contracted with the private owners for the use of the docks. The docks provided deep-water facilities between
San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...
and
Bremerton, Washington Bremerton is a city in Kitsap County, Washington. The population was 37,729 at the 2010 census and an estimated 41,405 in 2019, making it the largest city on the Kitsap Peninsula. Bremerton is home to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and the Bremerto ...
. The main naval base in the area was at
Mare Island Naval Shipyard The Mare Island Naval Shipyard (MINSY) was the first United States Navy base established on the Pacific Ocean. It is located northeast of San Francisco in Vallejo, California. The Napa River goes through the Mare Island Strait and separates th ...
, but silting in the area made it only suitable for shallow-draft ships. A Congressional hearing on Pacific Coast Naval Bases was held in San Francisco in 1920 at San Francisco City Hall, wherein city representatives, Mayor Rolph, City Engineer O'Shaughnessy and others testified on behalf of permanently siting the Navy at Hunters Point.


Navy purchase

At the start of WWII the Navy recognized the need for greatly increased naval shipbuilding and repair facilities in the
San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...
, and in 1940 acquired the property from the private owners, naming it Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. A bill that would have set aside $6 million for the purchase of the Hunters Point property from
Bethlehem Steel The Bethlehem Steel Corporation was an American steelmaking company headquartered in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. For most of the 20th century, it was one of the world's largest steel producing and shipbuilding companies. At the height of its succe ...
was deferred in March 1939. The property became one of the major
shipyard A shipyard, also called a dockyard or boatyard, is a place where ships are built and repaired. These can be yachts, military vessels, cruise liners or other cargo or passenger ships. Dockyards are sometimes more associated with maintenance a ...
s of the west coast. It was later renamed Treasure Island Naval Station Hunters Point Annex. During the 1940s, many workers moved into the area to work at this shipyard and other wartime related industries. The key fissile components of the first
atomic bomb A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...
were loaded onto in July 1945 at Hunters Point for transfer to
Tinian Tinian ( or ; old Japanese name: 天仁安島, ''Tenian-shima'') is one of the three principal islands of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. Together with uninhabited neighboring Aguiguan, it forms Tinian Municipality, one of th ...
. After World War II and until 1969, the Hunters Point shipyard was the site of the
Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory The United States Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory (NRDL) was an early military lab created to study the effects of radiation and nuclear weapons. The facility was based at the Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco, California. Hist ...
, the US military's largest facility for applied nuclear research. The yard was used after the war to decontaminate ships from
Operation Crossroads Operation Crossroads was a pair of nuclear weapon tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll in mid-1946. They were the first nuclear weapon tests since Trinity in July 1945, and the first detonations of nuclear devices since the ...
. Because of all the testing, there is widespread radiological contamination of the site. After the war, with an influx of
blue collar A blue-collar worker is a working class person who performs manual labor. Blue-collar work may involve skilled or unskilled labor. The type of work may involving manufacturing, warehousing, mining, excavation, electricity generation and powe ...
industry, the area remained a naval base and commercial shipyard. In 1947 an enormous gantry crane with a capacity was completed at the site by the
American Bridge Company The American Bridge Company is a heavy/civil construction firm that specializes in building and renovating bridges and other large, complex structures. Founded in 1900, the company is headquartered in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pitts ...
. It was the largest crane in the world, and was intended to be used to remove the turrets of
battleship A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. It dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The term ''battleship'' came into use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ...
s so the guns could be quickly replaced while the old set was being refurbished on land. The Hunter's Point crane succeeded ''YD-171'', better known as ''Herman the German'', as the largest crane in America. In 1959 the gantry crane was the site of Operation Skycatch, where dummy
Polaris missile The UGM-27 Polaris missile was a two-stage solid-fueled nuclear-armed submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). As the United States Navy's first SLBM, it served from 1961 to 1980. In the mid-1950s the Navy was involved in the Jupiter missile ...
s were fired and caught via a string of arresting cables, before being lowered to the ground for testing. Previous versions of the test had the missiles flung out into the bay and retrieved from the ocean floor. A large trapezoidal frame was erected atop the gantry crane for the
UGM-73 Poseidon The UGM-73 Poseidon missile was the second US Navy nuclear-armed submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) system, powered by a two-stage solid-fuel rocket. It succeeded the UGM-27 Polaris beginning in 1972, bringing major advances in warheads ...
missile test facility; the structural members were lifted by
Marine Boss Weeks 533 is a capacity Clyde Iron Works model 52 barge-mounted crane which is the largest revolving floating crane on the East Coast of the United States. It was originally ordered for bridge construction and has since been used in several nota ...
in 1967. The addition of the frame brought the total height of the crane to nearly . The crane dominates the landscape in the area, as it is easily visible from miles around.


Pacific Reserve Fleet, Hunters Point

Pacific Reserve Fleet, Hunters Point also called Pacific Reserve Fleet, Hunters Point Group was a
United States Navy reserve fleets The United States Navy maintains a number of its ships as part of a reserve fleet, often called the "Mothball Fleet". While the details of the maintenance activity have changed several times, the basics are constant: keep the ships afloat and s ...
at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. The mothball fleet of World War II ships was next to the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. Some ships there were reactivated for
Korean War , date = {{Ubl, 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953 (''de facto'')({{Age in years, months, weeks and days, month1=6, day1=25, year1=1950, month2=7, day2=27, year2=1953), 25 June 1950 – present (''de jure'')({{Age in years, months, weeks a ...
and
Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
.


Navy closure

The Navy operated the yard as a repair facility until 1974, when it leased most of it to a commercial ship repair company, who used it until 1986. A copy of the planned closure list was obtained by the
Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...
in 1973. The Hunters Point Shipyard was reactivated briefly between 1986 and 1989 as an annex to Naval Station Treasure Island. The Hunters Point Shipyard Artists (HPSA) is a community of artists who rent studios in the former U.S. naval shipyard on Hunters Point in the Bayview community of San Francisco. An artist community since 1983, the Hunters Point Shipyard is now home to more than 250 artists. In 1987, the Navy considered reopening the shipyard as the home port for the newly reactivated , which would move from
Long Beach Long Beach is a city in Los Angeles County, California. It is the 42nd-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 466,742 as of 2020. A charter city, Long Beach is the seventh-most populous city in California. Incorporate ...
. Rear Admiral Robert L. Toney and Mayor
Dianne Feinstein Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein ( ; born Dianne Emiel Goldman; June 22, 1933) is an American politician who serves as the senior United States senator from California, a seat she has held since 1992. A member of the Democratic Party, she was ...
signed an agreement that committed San Francisco to spend up to $1 million per year to maintain the infrastructure, including dredging and traffic improvements. After Feinstein was succeeded as mayor by
Art Agnos Arthur Christ Agnos (born Arthouros Agnos; [] September 1, 1938) is an American politician. He served as the 39th Mayor of San Francisco, mayor of San Francisco, California from 1988 to 1992 and as the Regional Head of the United States Department ...
, Agnos declared his opposition to the new home port, stating the costs would outweigh potential benefits. A referendum was held on the issue in the November 1988 general election. One proposition offered support for the Navy's plan, and another proposition, sponsored by Agnos, stated the infrastructure costs would be borne by the Navy, and 351 new civilian jobs were required to be created. Despite the passage of the proposition supporting the Navy's plan, the
Base Realignment and Closure Commission Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) is a process by a United States federal government commission to increase United States Department of Defense efficiency by coordinating the realignment and closure of military installations following the end o ...
(BRAC) recommended building the base for ''Missouri'' at Long Beach, San Diego, or Pearl Harbor. In 1989, the base was declared a
Superfund site Superfund sites are polluted locations in the United States requiring a long-term response to clean up hazardous material contaminations. They were designated under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERC ...
requiring long-term clean-up.


BRAC, remediation of environmental contamination, 1994

in 1994, the Navy closed the shipyard and base as part of the next round of
Base Realignment and Closure Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) is a process by a United States federal government commission to increase United States Department of Defense efficiency by coordinating the realignment and closure of military installations following the end o ...
recommendations. Besides
radioactive contamination Radioactive contamination, also called radiological pollution, is the deposition of, or presence of radioactive substances on surfaces or within solids, liquids, or gases (including the human body), where their presence is unintended or undesirab ...
, Hunter's Point had a succession of coal- and oil-fired power generation facilities which left a legacy of pollution, both from smokestack effluvium and leftover byproducts that were dumped in the vicinity. The BRAC program has managed the majority of the site's numerous pollution remediation projects.


Shipyard Redevelopment

As of August 2020, the former shipyard site is still being decontaminated, and has been split into multiple parcels to allow the Navy to declare them clean and safe for redevelopment separately. While
Lennar Lennar Corporation is a home construction company based in the census-designated place of Fontainebleau, Florida, with a Miami postal address. In 2021, the company was the second-largest home construction company in the United States based on the ...
has built and sold hundreds of new condominium units on the property, regulators, activists, and cleanup workers have claimed that the site is still heavily contaminated and that
Tetra Tech Tetra Tech, Inc. is an American consulting and engineering services firm based in Pasadena, California. The company provides consulting, engineering, program management, and construction management services in the areas of water, environment, in ...
, the company contracted to handle the cleanup and testing, has repeatedly violated established cleanup protocols, deliberately falsified radiation test results at the site to falsely show that there is little remaining radiation, and fired employees who attempted to force workers to perform radiation tests as required. According to an article published in 2017, the Navy stated that at least 386 out of the 25,000+ soil samples that have been collected over the past two decades were identified as "anomalous." New homes built on the property were set to be available to tenants in the winter of 2014/2015. The first residents began moving into homes in June 2015. In September 2016, the
United States Environmental Protection Agency The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an independent executive agency of the United States federal government tasked with environmental protection matters. President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of EPA on July 9, 1970; it be ...
(EPA) halted the transfer of additional land at Hunters Point from the Navy to the city and to real estate developers. Per a letter sent from the EPA to the Navy, the process was placed on hold until "the actual potential public exposure to radioactive material at and near" the shipyard can be "clarified."


Proposition P, 2000

In 2000, San Francisco voters passed Proposition P in a landslide, with 86% voting "yes". The proposition stated that the Navy would be responsible for cleaning up the shipyard to the highest standard. The year after the proposition passed, the
San Francisco Board of Supervisors The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is the legislative body within the government of the City and County of San Francisco. Government and politics The City and County of San Francisco is a consolidated city-county, being simultaneously a c ...
passed, and the mayor signed, a resolution titled “Adoption of Proposition P as Official City Policy for the Environmental Remediation of Hunters Point Shipyard.” The resolution made it clear that it was the city's policy that Hunters Point "be cleaned to a level which would enable the unrestricted use of the property - the highest standard for cleanup established by the United States Environmental Protection Agency." The Navy modified its Record of Decision (ROD) for Parcel B of Hunters Point Shipyard, which weakened the cleanup standards for the parcel. Despite this, the Navy still found contamination levels higher than its cleanup standards, and in 2009 moved to rework its entire cleanup strategy for the parcel. The Navy once again amended the ROD for Parcel B, this time to change its remediation strategy from removing all contaminated soils from the parcel to installing covers in the soil as a means of suppressing the contamination. By abandoning its commitment to pursue a remediation effort based on cleanup, the Navy also abandoned its commitment to clean up Hunters Point to unrestricted residential release standards. In Parcel G the Navy followed a similar pattern of disregarding Proposition P, and therefore San Francisco city policy, by lowering cleanup standards and shifting the future land use of the area. The 2009 ROD for Parcel G outlined its future use as mostly industrial, and therefore required lower cleanup standards than a parcel set for residential use. In 2017, the Navy released an Explanation of Significant Differences for the Parcel G ROD which stated that the parcel would be zoned largely for residential use. This shift occurred without tightening the cleanup standards to a residential level; the Navy instead put "action levels" in place, which are still lower than the criteria for residential use. In Parcel C and Parcel E the Navy bypassed its commitment to a full cleanup as outlined by Proposition P, relying instead on soil covers and 'institutional controls'. Under the
National Contingency Plan The National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan or National Contingency Plan (NCP) is the United States federal government's blueprint for responding to oil spills and hazardous substance releases. It documents national response ...
(NCP), which is the central regulating process for governing Superfund sites, community acceptance is one of the nine criteria for establishing cleanup requirements. The text of Proposition P and the Board of Supervisors resolution adopting it as city policy references the NCP and the community acceptance provision. The proposition and the resolution both make clear that the community is committed to the highest level of cleanup. Thus, the Navy, by refusing to establish cleanup standards that allow for unrestricted residential use, is violating federal superfund law under CERCLA and putting future residents of Hunters Point at risk.


Attempts to reinstate the RAB, 2020

In 2020, the Navy BRAC decision not to reestablish the
Restoration Advisory Board A Restoration Advisory Board or RAB is a group, which meets on a regular basis to discuss environmental restoration at a US military installation currently or formerly used and owned by the US Department of Defense (DoD). These developed in the 1 ...
was based on a limited survey return of 40 respondents, which did not match the response of over 200 petitioners who signed the community-led initiative to reestablish the RAB.
Biomonitoring In analytical chemistry, biomonitoring is the measurement of the body burden of toxic chemical compounds, elements, or their metabolites, in biological substances. Often, these measurements are done in blood and urine. Biomonitoring is performed ...
funded by the
Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health {{COI, date=May 2012 The Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health is an independent public charity, devoted exclusively to elevating the priority of children's health and increasing the quality and accessibility of children's health care thr ...
detected
thallium Thallium is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Tl and atomic number 81. It is a gray post-transition metal that is not found free in nature. When isolated, thallium resembles tin, but discolors when exposed to air. Chemists W ...
and manganese in high frequency among shipyard workers and residents.


Dry Docks


See also

*
Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park is a United States national historical park located in Richmond, California, near San Francisco. The park preserves and interprets the legacy of the United States home front ...
*


References


External links


HUNTERS POINT NAVAL SHIPYARD CALIFORNIA EPA ID# CA1170090087
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency pages on Hunters Point site.
Renaissance of the Hunters Point Shipyard
Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Redevelopment Agency.

{{Authority control United States Navy shipyards Bethlehem shipyards
Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard The Hunters Point Naval Shipyard was a United States Navy shipyard in San Francisco, California, located on of waterfront at Hunters Point in the southeast corner of the city. Originally, Hunters Point was a commercial shipyard established ...
Naval Shipyard A shipyard, also called a dockyard or boatyard, is a place where ships are built and repaired. These can be yachts, military vessels, cruise liners or other cargo or passenger ships. Dockyards are sometimes more associated with maintenance a ...
Military installations closed in 1994 Military Superfund sites 1870 establishments in California Superfund sites in California Military facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area Closed installations of the United States Navy Bayview–Hunters Point, San Francisco