Zeneca site: Prime home spot or toxic danger-zone?

The vacant property on Richmond’s southern boundary has long stumped city planners and tempted developers.

At first glance, it’s a beautiful piece of real estate, with tall grasses, marshlands and stunning views of San Francisco and the Marin headlands. The San Francisco Bay Trail, popular with walkers and cyclists, runs along the property’s southern edge next door to UC Berkeley’s Richmond Field Station, home to research and development labs. But underground lie vast quantities of contaminated soil, laced with arsenic, uranium, mercury, DDT and many other chemicals — a legacy of more than a century of manufacturing, first by Stauffer Chemical and later Zeneca (today AstraZeneca), the pharmaceutical giant. 

Four years ago the Richmond City Council approved a developer’s plan to build a massive new housing development there that would include offices, retail and open space. But today the project’s future remains unclear. To many environmentalists and residents, the plan to build houses there is a flagrant disregard of science and poses serious potential risks to human health. To supporters, it’s a way to boost jobs and housing and inject much-needed cash into the city’s budget. 

The Bay’s toxic legacy

In many ways, the 89-acre site, which sits near South 49th and Montgomery streets, is not unique. It’s one of thousands of properties contaminated with chemicals, known as brownfields, around the San Francisco Bay, the result of factories and other facilities dumping pollutants into the water and the surrounding land for decades. This changed when the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972 and the public became more aware of the dangers of disposing of contaminants this way.

Now, with available space for development in shorter supply and the need for housing ballooning, many Bay Area cities are grappling with the repercussions of this toxic history.

Treasure Island, Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, and more locally, Richmond’s own Marina Bay, are just a few of many contaminated sites where cleanups have been attempted in recent years. Others, such as Point Molate, a former Department of Defense Navy fuel storage facility where fuel tanks were buried underground, have been designated for parks and recreational purposes. 

How clean is clean enough?

Zeneca stopped operating in 1997, and in 2004, the Department of Toxic Substance Control (DTSC), a state agency tasked with overseeing the redevelopment of polluted sites, assumed responsibility for the property. In 2016, Richmond began discussions about the Richmond Bay Specific Plan, a vision document for the city’s southern shore. As part of the environmental review, talk soon turned to the best way to continue cleaning up the site, especially if people would be living there. DTSC recommended a partial clean up, arguing that unearthing and trucking all of the chemical-laden soil would create more pollution, dust and traffic through the surrounding neighborhoods and would take 10 years.

Despite that, there was significant concern about the amount of chemicals on the site and the city council soon adopted a resolution to require the highest standard for the cleanup, known as Option 6. City Manager Bill Lindsay even penned a letter to the state Department of Toxic Substance Control conveying the city’s strong preference for a full clean up to ensure the health and wellbeing of future residents.

But in 2019, new city council members were elected. That same year, Shopoff Realty Investments, a real estate investment company based in Orange County, purchased the property and soon began inviting council members to breakfast meetings, according to then-councilmember Eduardo Martinez, who is currently mayor. Not long after, council members Demnlus Johnson III and Nat Bates spearheaded a new resolution directing staff to write a letter to DTSC urging approval of the partial cleanup, contradicting the wishes of the previous council.

Consequently, only a small amount of the most contaminants — about 2%, by some estimates — was removed. Today, the vast majority of chemicals remain underground, topped by a concrete seal. However, the site is not lined on the sides or bottom. 

Project viewed as economic boon for city, nonprofits

With cleanup underway, in December 2020, the Richmond City Council approved a plan to build as many as 4,000 apartments and condominiums on the site, along with a grocery store, retail, offices and a 30-acre park, the latter which would sit on the most polluted part of the property. The project was called Campus Bay and touted as a way to revitalize Richmond’s southern shoreline and create much-needed housing. Then-Mayor Tom Butt, along with council members Bates, Ben Choi and Johnson all voted in favor of the plan. Martinez and Melvin Willis, who is up for reelection in District 1, opposed it, citing concerns about health impacts. Councilmember Jael Myrick, whose term was ending that month, abstained from voting.

In exchange, Shopoff and its new partner, Hilco Redevelopment Partners (HRP), a Chicago-based investment firm specializing in redeveloping “obsolete industrial sites,” promised the city $22 million in community benefits, including a steady infusion of cash once a certain amount of units had been sold. Other perks included support for community programs such as RichmondBUILD Academy, which trains young people in construction and helps them obtain jobs, funds for Richmond Promise, the scholarship program, and improvements to Richmond Fire Department Station 64, located on the other side of Interstate 580. There would also be trailhead improvements for the Bay Trail, nearly $3 million in grants for other community organizations and an additional $8.25 million for general “community benefits” that would be delivered to the city between the sixth and 10th year of development.

It sounds generous, but to many opponents, the community benefits pale in comparison to what the developer stands to earn on a project of this magnitude and what the city and the state might be liable for if future residents start to get sick.

“You dangle incentives in front of a city and get approvals made when you should be doing a full clean up, something that had been supported by the previous (city) council,” said Norman LaForce, an open space and parks advocate and an attorney representing community and environmental groups that filed lawsuits against both the city and DTSC in 2021. “This is a toxic site, and not some minor toxics, but where Stauffer made DDT, which is really potent stuff. Who will pay for it when we find out that there are clusters of cancers or children come down with strange illnesses?”

Earlier this year, the lawsuit against DTSC was found to be without merit, but a second one, against the city, is currently on appeal at the California Supreme Court.  It has been said that Shopoff may be looking to sell the property, although the company denied it when contacted by Richmondside for comment. Neither Shopoff nor HRP returned calls asking why they wanted to develop the heavily contaminated site.

Debate continues over cleanup

Russ Edmondson, a spokesman for the Department of Toxic Substance Control declined to be interviewed, but in emailed comments said the agency “ensures that remedies are implemented so that future proposed land uses are protective of public health and the environment,” adding that DTSC uses qualitative and quantitative metrics to measure the success of a cleanup.” 

Tom Butt, who was mayor when Campus Bay was approved, defended his decision to approve the project, citing the Bay Area’s need for housing. 

“There are a lot of housing sites on former brownfields, and there’s no indication they’re unsafe,” he said in an interview with Richmondside. “The question is: Does every brownfield have to meet the dig and haul (all the contaminants away) objective to be safe for future use? I don’t think so…We have to rely on public agencies for things like this.”

Former councilmember Johnson said he trusted regulators when he was told that a full cleanup would have significant negative impacts on the surrounding community.

“No one group has a monopoly on concern over contamination, but the difference was how to go about handling it,” he said. “My preference was to cap it, and there was no evidence that doing so is dangerous. That’s what the professionals recommended, and I had no reason to not trust the experts.”

Bates did not return calls for comment, and Choi declined to be interviewed when reached by phone, only saying that “approving a project was the only way to get the site cleaned up,” which is inaccurate, according to the DTSC, which said site cleanup is not contingent on any development plans.

Residents and environmental groups were aghast at the council’s sudden support in 2020 for building housing atop what some describe as one of the most complex brownfields in California. They give periodic tours of the area to raise awareness, and last summer, the Richmond Shoreline Alliance also launched an online self-guided tour.

“It looks benign, but what we have here is 500,000 cubic yards of toxic waste, including Class 1 hazardous waste,” said Sherry Padgett, a south Richmond resident and longtime activist for a full cleanup of the Zeneca site. She gives occasional in-person tours of the area.

Concerns over sea level rise

Chief among environmentalists’ concerns is what could happen in the event of sea level rise, flooding or an earthquake. Under such scenarios, the concrete seal could potentially crack, releasing the toxic stew of chemicals buried underground. 

According to the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, sea levels are expected to rise more than 23 inches by 2050, which would flood portions of the Campus Bay site. A rise in water could mobilize toxic gasses in the soil and push them toward the surface, according to Kristina Hill, a professor of environmental planning and urban design at UC Berkeley who in 2022 was asked to assess the impact of sea level rise on the Campus Bay development. 

Hill concluded that the site was not suitable for a residential development. “Particularly when housing is the intended land use, premature claims of certainty…could lead to disastrous health outcomes for children and vulnerable adults who may have already suffered lifetimes of unjust environmental exposure,” Hill wrote in her analysis.

According to DTSC’s Edmondson, the agency has considered sea level rise in multiple cleanup decisions and in 2022 required AstraZeneca to use updated data to reevaluate sea level projections. It has already installed groundwater and soil gas monitoring wells, which will remain in place in the outdoor areas after housing is built. In addition, future buildings will have sampling equipment integrated in the structures, such as in the foundation, allowing for sampling to continue. If monitoring shows that gasses are entering buildings, additional protective measures will be taken. 

But many project opponents say they no longer trust the agency, especially in light of recent revelations of incomplete cleanups, including radioactive material found at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, where a developer plans to build 10,000 housing units, and continued contamination at the United Heckathorne site at Marina Bay’s Levin Terminal despite years of remediation.

“We need housing, (but) there are far better places to build it than on toxic shorelines or shorelines in general,” said Richmond City Councilmember Gayle McLaughlin. “We are at a juncture in society where we have to rethink old solutions and implement the most forward-thinking (ones) if we are to protect our community and those future residents who would end up living on site as well as the planet.”