Diseaseville

The last and largest building to serve as headquarters for the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, which handled a vast array of long-lived nuclear materials while experimenting with radiation in the early years of the Cold War, is located at the southwest border of the shipyard, on a FUDS. The building and surrounding land, just down the hill from Old Navy Road, are owned by an investment group. The building, now leased to a storage company, has been cleared of radiological contamination, but the surrounding property has never been investigated for radiological or other contamination.

Earlier this year, Navy officials researching historical documents in conjunction with the shipyard cleanup discovered that the NRDL also used former shipyard buildings in the area around what is now the Mariner's Village town houses. The buildings -- located in an area now bounded by Donahue and Earl streets and LaSalle and Jerrold avenues -- were demolished in 1952. Navy officials say the buildings were occupied by the Material and Accounts Division of NRDL, which was in charge of administrative tasks rather than laboratory operations. But there is no way to know all of what happened more than 50 years ago at any given shipyard facility; other former NRDL sites discovered on the base have proven to be contaminated.

The path to an investigation of possible contamination at Mariner's Village is long, winding, and obstructed by miles of red tape.

Any property that the military used before 1988, and that has a connection to hazardous, toxic, or radioactive materials, is cataloged in the Army Corps of Engineers' FUDS inventory. Once the property is cataloged, the Corps prepares a cost estimate for an environmental investigation of the FUDS, and the investigation awaits federal funding. In this region alone, which covers Northern California, Utah, and Nevada, there are 435 FUDS sharing an annual environmental investigation budget of $20 million, says Jerry Vincent, who oversees FUDS property for the Army in this area.

"If I have funding, it takes three or four months [to investigate]," explains Vincent. "If not, it could be years."

San Francisco Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, says she will support whatever funding the Department of Defense needs to clean up former shipyard property released to the private sector without proper screening. During the past four years, Pelosi, working with Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, has secured $225 million for cleaning and revitalizing the shipyard. "The possible presence of toxic materials is a matter of serious concern to me and to the residents of Bayview­Hunters Point," Pelosi says. "If there is contamination of these parcels, I will work in Congress to identify the appropriate federal agencies and funding to clean it up."

Residents and environmental activists familiar with the situation are appalled that the Department of Defense has not made it a priority to investigate possible pollution of a community it helped create.

ARC Ecology's Bloom notes that the military's role in the creation of Hunters Point as a residential neighborhood -- bringing African-Americans to the area to labor in the shipyard -- makes its failure to conduct a timely environmental investigation particularly egregious.

"The military created that community smack dab against the shipyard, so for any of the airborne and soil-borne pollutants, they [the residents] were on the front lines," Bloom says. "[Workers] brought home the contaminants on their shoes and in their clothes, so that their families are on the front lines too."

Essie Webb moved to Hunters Point in 1946. Her husband had already begun work as a welder at Hunters Point Shipyard by the time Webb arrived from Missouri with their 10-month-old son, Olin. Webb recalls going to the San Francisco Housing Authority office on Kiska Road and being settled into the buildings on Old Navy Road. She lived there with her family, which would grow to include five of her own and three adopted children, until 1973.

"To me, it was very nice," Webb recalls. "It was a very secure neighborhood, because you knew everyone who lived there. We all kind of looked after each other and each other's children. We would lock the door, and the key was put in the mailbox or under the doormat. It was that kind of neighborhood. You could trust each other."

In addition to raising eight children, Webb managed to participate in civic work through the public schools, the Redevelopment Agency, and the Housing Authority, where she sat on the Relocation Appeals Board hearing complaints of tenants who believed they'd been improperly evicted. At 85, she knows all about sickness in Hunters Point.

"I have grandchildren who have asthma," Webb says. "And I had asthma when I lived up on the hill."

Webb helped with the Bayview Hunters Point Health and Environmental Assessment Task Force's health survey. The results were no surprise to her. She lists off the names of relatives, friends, and neighbors who've had cancer and asthma and diabetes over the years, with little effort.

"Health problems have gotten a lot worse," Webb says. "Just about everybody I knew who lived up there had cancer or asthma. A lot of people still have cancer and asthma."