Tour Richmond’s toxic shoreline online or in person

For the last five years, the Richmond Shoreline Alliance has been leading occasional educational “toxic tours,” walking participants along parts of an 89-acre stretch of shoreline contaminated by more than a century of industrial activity and chemical manufacturing.

Now there’s a digital Zeneca toxic tour that breaks down this complex issue into 12 slides featuring a mix of short text blocks, animated graphics, quizzes, illustrations and photos to unpack its controversial history and inspire viewers to get more engaged in its future — a future that could include a housing and retail development. They also plan to release a series of short animated videos later this year discussing the history of the site, chemicals present, impacts on groundwater and other topics.

Tours aim to build support for more extensive shoreline cleanup

The goal is to increase public awareness and provide more detailed information about the contaminated site, said Janet Johnson, co-chair of the Richmond Shoreline Alliance. 

Many Richmond residents remain unaware of the extent of the contamination on the property, which sits directly across the water from Costco, 2.5 miles from the Point Isabel dog park, and runs along the popular San Francisco Bay Trail, where walkers enjoy San Francisco skyline views. In 2020, the Richmond City Council approved plans to build up to 4,000 units of housing on the site. 

“(Our) goal in creating this (online) tour is to educate and mobilize the Richmond community and the broader San Francisco Bay Area public to support a complete cleanup of the Zeneca site,” Johnson said. 

The list of toxic substances disposed of or buried there over the past 100 years hits just about every letter in the alphabet: Arsenic, mercury, radium, uranium, DDT and benzene are just a few of the nearly 100 metals, pesticides, volatile organic compounds and other substances buried beneath a barrier of thin cellulose and fibers that is topped off with a cement cap. This barrier was intended to be temporary, critics say, while the California Department of Toxic Substances Control told Richmondside by email that it is adequate.

The site is known by the name of the last chemical manufacturer to operate there — Zeneca Inc. — which occupied it for much of the ‘80s and ‘90s, but the list of responsible polluters dates back a century, including Ford and the Stauffer Chemical Company. Zeneca later merged with the Swedish pharmaceutical company Astra to form AstraZeneca, and the site was sold to a developer, HRP Campus Bay Property, LLC, in 2021. 

The site’s history isn’t made obvious to most visitors. For example, East Bay Regional Park District signs there say “Caution resource protection,” without mentioning the contamination. But during the shoreline alliance’s May 11 in-person tour, guides pointed out that behind those signs is a chemical evaporation pool that has not been treated or covered up with any protective barrier.

“Areas at the western end of the [Stege Marsh] are so contaminated that, despite restoration efforts, nothing will grow there,” Johnson said. These same areas are home to a variety of shorebirds, and many other animal species and plant life, she said.

DTSC site cleanups took place from 1999 to 2002. Work included demolishing site structures, digging up less than 2% of the toxic soil, mixing it with limestone to neutralize it, spreading it over 30 acres and thinly capping it.

In recent years, the agency has removed an estimated 4,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil, and beginning May 2022 began doing soil vapor extraction, a process used to remove volatile organic compounds (VOCs), gasses that are created when chemicals evaporate. This is done by drilling extraction wells into the contaminated soil and using vacuum pumps or blowers to pull air up through the soil for treatment above ground. 

Late last year, DTSC also began doing groundwater injections, to help break down contaminants and installed 30 groundwater monitoring wells. Work is expected to continue on the site for many years, according to DTSC.

The RSA maintains that the cleanup plan approved by the DTSC is inadequate in light of recent State of California guidance on sea-level rise, which the online tour explains is a problem because rising groundwater levels could “mobilize the toxic metals in the soil and push them toward the surface.”

“This would potentially crack the planned concrete cap and release toxic materials onto the project site’s surface, as well as spread toxic materials to adjoining properties, all of which would be significant new impacts,” the online tour states. “The dangers this outcome would pose to residents of the 4,000 proposed housing units as well as to nearby residents have not been adequately addressed by the California DTSC or the developer.” 

RSA also says that DTSC ignored a recent CalEPA protocol issued on the risks of volatile organic compounds, compounds that have a high vapor pressure and low water solubility and can have a whole host of health impacts, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. 

The DTSC told Richmondside: “At the Zeneca site, the recent groundwater injections (designed to treat volatile organic compounds) ran from approximately October 2023 to April 2024 and are now complete.”