99 cent things

Regarding an exceedance of Pu-239 in U.S. Navy air monitoring at Hunters Point Shipyard.

With the help today from a subscriber to Though the Heavens Fall as well as persistent, daily calls from me to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH), U.S. Navy and the City and County of San Francisco I finally called a number that a kind young man answered and helped connect me to information about the handful of citizens charged with advising the Navy’s oversight of clean-up and decontamination at Hunters Point Shipyard.

Moreover, I placed that call just in time. Because, the young man informed me at the jump, the Hunters Point Shipyard Citizens Advisory Committee (HPS-CAC) was holding a meeting this evening. In fact, it is still going on, and I am still livestreaming the questions from community members as I begin this writing.

Hunters Point Shipyard & too much Pu-239.

It was interesting to watch this meeting livestream. It was interesting to listen to Michael Pound, a civilian environmental officer with the U.S. Navy with oversight responsibility at Hunters Point and Susan Philip, MD, MPH, public health officer with the SFDPH, speak at this meeting (Mr. Pound spoke a lot more than Dr. Philip, by the way). It was interesting to me because these are two of the people that I have reached out to repeatedly. I have left voice mails and sent emails and submitted questions regarding this matter repeatedly. Every one of those messages and each and every question went unanswered.

Regarding an Exceedance of Plutonium-239.

It was also interesting, and gave me a little hope, to watch Dr. Veronica Hunnicutt, Chair of the HPS Citizen Advisory Committee, run the meeting. The HPS-CAC has an extremely difficult mandate. Dr. Hunnicutt did well to keep the meeting in good order, make room for members of the community to raise up their voices and their concerns and assist in hold the U.S. Navy to account.

Michael Pound, U.S Navy BRAC Environmental Coordinator, did not do so well. He opened his presentation with an apology, one which made me wonder if he attended a — “How to make people think you are apologizing without really apologizing” — seminar with Mayor Daniel Lurie. Pound and Dr. Kathryn Higley, the Navy’s Community Technical Advisor and Oregon State University Professor made an approximation of providing enough information to convince the scientist in me to believe that this exceedance was not a threat to public health.

Every regulator, technical expert and government agency representative utterly failed, however, to understand the heart of the matter that so many local residents came to raise up their voices about. What dozens of local residents came to the dais to say, one after another, for nearly two hours, was that the Navy has, once again, broken trust with the people of Bayview & Hunters Point.

Never fear, the Navy is here to help.

I mean, I get it, the Navy really does not do “trust” very well, ever. And whenever they or anyone in the Department of Defense decide to try to build trust, they forget the most fundamental lesson in that regard. If you want to build trust with people, you have to be honest with them and you have to be forthright with them.

It is the forthright thing that actually gives people the most trouble. And that is the most significant issue that the Navy, and Micheal Pound in particular, had with the Pu-239 situation at Hunters Point. They did not fail to tell the truth; they just took eleven months to do it.

That is not being forthright. That is the antithesis of being forthright. When people make up their minds about trust, it often comes down to details like that. Eleven months is a long time. A very long time. Each day for eleven months the artists who work very near to where the Pu-239 air monitoring exceedance occurred, went about making their art and living their lives. And so did every local resident. I do not know if they felt secure in the thought that the Navy was looking out for their safety, but I know that they wanted to feel that.

It is the little things, the 99 cent things, the things that we count on and even take for granted — the safety of the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat, for example — that when the security of those things is taken from us, it is shattering. It sure as hell shatters trust with those responsible for taking that security from us.

The Navy and Michael Pound were not alone in foolishly not understanding that holding information back from people will never win their trust. Dr. Philip, Health Officer for the SF Department of Public Health, tried to show the local residents that showed up tonight that she cared, that she was miffed at the Navy, that she and her department should be trusted. But how does she square that position with the fact that I first left messages and sent emails to her 18 days ago and have never, even now, heard a single word from her or anyone at SF-DPH?

I won’t even mention how many people at EPA ghosted me over those same 18 days. But of course, the EPA representative at the meeting this evening tried just as hard as Dr. Philip to be indignant that the Navy never shared the information with them either. I wonder if the Navy has shared the information about the Pu-239 exceedance with Dr. Philip and the EPA, if they would have, in turn shared that information with local residents and the people of San Francisco?

I guess I will never know. But between the U.S. Navy, the EPA and Dr. Philip I have decided that what they all need is for people like me to pay a lot more attention to what is going on over at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.

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Toward that end — Parcel G Radiation Safety — Wednesday, November 19th

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Also — HPS Citizen Advisory Committee — November 20th. This meeting is also about the demolition of Parcel G, but the U.S. Navy will be there so that should make it interesting as well. In-person meeting location at OCII/CAC Shipyard Site Office 451 Galvez Ave, Suite 100, San Francisco.

Come on out and join me and we’ll do our best to show the U.S. Navy how to build real trust with local residents… john