About two dozen Richmond residents and environmentalists gathered recently to address what they say has been a failure of the EPA to adequately disclose details about its plans to conduct a second cleanup of the United Heckathorn Superfund site in the Richmond harbor.
The federal government shutdown, which ended this week, delayed the last in a series of EPA community meetings, but those at a Nov. 6 meeting hosted by environmentalists at Easter Hill United Methodist Church said the EPA’s lack of urgency and lack of transparency is nothing new.
The United Heckathorn site sits in a harbor inlet not far from Richmond’s ferry terminal and includes Parr Canal and Lauritzen Channel. The site became contaminated over more than two decades, from the 1940s to the 1960s, after companies including the United Heckathorn Chemical Co. disposed of chemicals in the water, including DDT, which the federal government banned in 1972.
The EPA first attempted to remove carcinogenic pesticides, including dieldrin and dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, in the 1990s by dredging sediments from the Lauritzen Channel and laying a concrete cap over adjacent contaminated land, but a 2016 study showed that toxins remained in soil, sediments, water, and tissues of marine organisms, so the agency went back to the drawing board. Five years later, a follow-up study showed sediments at the central part of the channel had up to 3,800 times more DDT than their target goal in the 90s.
Next EPA Heckathorn meeting
What: EPA Heckathorn Superfund meeting, the final in a series
When: Jan. 28, 2026 at 6:30 p.m. via Zoom
Details: The meetings are hosted by the EPA with support from the state Department of Toxic Substances Control, San Francisco Baykeeper, Sierra Club, and the Richmond Shoreline Alliance.
More information: Slides from past presentations: April: Site background and history; May: Investigations into the initial ineffective remedy; June: Human Health and Ecological Risk Assessment: July: Cleanup Technologies; August: Superfund Process.
Early this year, the EPA launched a community consultation process and proposed a timeline for developing a second cleanup plan. After five public meetings and additional meetings with representatives from the environmental nonprofits Richmond Shoreline Alliance, San Francisco Baykeeper and the Sierra Club, a sixth meeting, scheduled for September, was bumped to October and then pushed to January due to the government shutdown, likely delaying the planned early 2026 release of the cleanup plan for public feedback.
An EPA spokesperson told Richmondside the environmental groups agreed to delay the sixth meeting, given the government shutdown. Environmentalists involved in the decision said a consideration was uncertainty over if and when EPA employees involved in the project would be furloughed.
Residents proposed their own Superfund site cleanup plan
Residents and environmental groups say they felt frozen out of meaningful dialogue even before the government shutdown.
“The regulatory agency staff… are not telling us anything about the proposed cleanup plan, they are adamant,” said Janet Johnson, Richmond Shoreline Alliance coordinator.
This frustration prompted RSA, the Sierra Club and SF Baykeeper to draw up a separate cleanup plan based on consultations with engineers, environmental scientists, former government workers and the community. They propose draining the Lauritzen Channel, then removing all contaminated soil, sediment, rocks and industrial debris.
One of the main priorities that was repeatedly brought up is the need to work in a dry environment. Not only do the organizers believe this will be easier than dredging up material in the channel (as the EPA did in the 1990s), but they are concerned that working underwater might accidentally spread DDT.
More than two months after submitting their plan to the EPA, the coalition hasn’t received a response, organizers said. The federal agency told Richmondside that it is reviewing the plan but it “has not yet selected a recommended cleanup strategy for the marine sediment area.” The agency now aims to release its plan within the first half of next year.
The EPA emailed a statement saying, “The EPA’s focus has been, and will continue to be, fulfilling the agency’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment by cleaning up the marine sediment area of the United Heckathorn site.”
The pace of the process has frustrated Richmond residents, who note that the neighborhoods adjacent to the site are home to low income and predominantly Black and Latinx communities.
“If it was another area, would it have been 30 years to take care of it? I don’t think so,” said Linda Whitmore, a member of the Santa Fe neighborhood council, at the Nov. 6 meeting.
Lejon Fahim Reese, another Santa Fe neighborhood council member, said generations of residents have experienced health issues.
“Just growing up down there, my grandmother passed of cancer, and there’s a lot of people being affected,” Reese said.
Residents are also concerned about where removed contaminated material will be disposed of. When the channel was first dredged in the 1990s, then-journalist Vernon Whitmore of Richmond followed the material to a landfill in the Arizona desert. He said he was shocked to see the landfill bordered a Native American reservation.
“The (Arizona) dumpsite is dirty and dusty. The wind is plowing. That made me think, ‘They’re breathing in all this toxic dust,’ ” Whitmore said. “It was really sad.”
According to the National Pesticide Information Center, toxic compounds such as dieldrin and DDT break down slowly and persist in environments for decades, but neither the EPA’s original plan nor the community’s new proposed plan have identified where to dispose of toxic materials that end up being removed.
Johnson, of the RSA, urged those at the meeting to keep pushing the cleanup process forward.
“Especially in light of the challenges posed by climate change and sea level rise, our community must advocate strongly for the complete removal of all contaminated materials,” she said. “This is not just an environmental issue. It’s about ensuring the health and safety of our community for generations to come.”
Thanks for the article on this United Heckathorn community meeting. You laid out what has been a long, complicated and very frustrating struggle and how community organizations are fighting back in a clear manner. I also appreciated your reporting on the impact this Superfund site has had on the neighborhoods that have endured the worse of this site’s poisoned legacy — Richmond’s Santa Fe neighborhood and the Native American reservation in Arizona where the contaminated material was dumped after the first (and now failed) clean-up, This is exactly why I subscribe – and donate — to Richmondside. Thanks for putting ‘local” and “independent” back into our news.