SAN FRANCISCO PORT AUTHORITY DEFIES LOGIC ON PIER 98
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Heron's Head Park was formed when the Piers rotted and people began dumping the worst type of toxic material in the late 1940's. Over the years anything and everything you can imagine was dumped at Pier 98. Heron's Head Park is at the end of Cargo Way.
The area surrounding the Piers in the early 1950's were well known as Butcher Town. Around the Potrero Hill there were some small business that dealt with the some real toxic material from the chrome plating, printing, batteries, and other manufacturing producing the worst type of toxins. It was not uncommon for anyone to dump the worst type of materials laden with toxins at Pier 98. This was way before any Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) came into force in the late 1970's. Even today it is not uncommon for people who go near Pier 98 and recollect and tell horror stories and how the whole place stunk. Hunter Point Naval Shipyard generated shipbuilding during the war effort and beyond till 1974 when it was closed. The Bay waters around Pier 98 were polluted by radiological elements from the near by Piers where Nuclear Submarines loaded the worst type of material very harmful to all living beings. The recent draft final Historical Radiological Report on Hunters Point Shipyard gives a glimpse of the tremendous amount of Radiological activity that took place in and around Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. Compounded in the late 1950's barrels of atom waste were dumped by the Navy very near Pier 98. The barrels were fired upon and sunk. In later years the Corps of Engineers who were involved in the dredging of the area around Piers 96 and 98 took the toxic dredge material and dumped it in and around the Piers 94, 96, and 98. In the late 1980's dirt from various locations most of it toxic were dumped mostly on Pier 98. Tons of building material from all over the City and County of San Francisco and neighboring counties too. In the interim since the early 1940's the toxins from the nearby Hunters Point Power Plant just a few hundred feet away washed on the shores of Pier 98. Tons of mercury, lead, asbestos, PCBs and a host of other dangerous elements harmful to humans, birds, insects, plants, and any living being. It polluted the air, the land, and the water. Ships made thousands of trips and engine oil, atomic waste from the sand blasting which took part in the Bikini and other Atomic tests washed on the shores of the near by piers including Pier 98. The Sand blasting occurred at the piers very near Pier 98. One has just to go to Pier 98 and stand in the middle of the artificial landmass and observe. For the last 60 years plus the near by Hunters Point Power Plant has blasted the near by area with the worst pathogens. It is no secret that the area has the highest amount of PCBs. It does not take a rocket scientist to tell you about the high content of Mercury not only from the amount dumped by the various activities I have mentioned but for years from the Santa Cruz old mercury mines left unattended the runoff which finally took to the Baywaters and followed the current hitting the various piers and affecting Piers 98 among them because of its protruding position. Birds, insects, animals, including homo sapiens will walk and take to land and water if they do not know what it is on the land, in the waters and air. Empirical data done in the most scientific manner clearly state that it is not right for anyone who is sane to go near Pier 98. I find it abhorring that I have to plead to the San Francisco Port Commissioners, the Board of Supervisors, the so called Environmentalists in San Francisco, in California, and the Nation that children are permitted to go and visit this toxic waste land - recently named Heron's Head Park in 1998. White folks will do anything for money. If you watch and see it is White folks who destroyed and polluted much of what is now polluted and now want to save the land. Some fools are calling this toxic landmass - wetland. It is a mass of land that is a Toxic Dump - nothing less. I suppose they have to sit down with the First People more precisely the Muwekma Ohlone who have patrimonial jurisdiction over Pier 98 and get their approval. Liars go before the San Francisco Commissioners and say that the youth living near by mostly African American and Samoans go to Heron's Park. This is a blatant lie. People testifying on behalf of Literacy for Environmental Justice (LEJ) most White folks from Marin Headlands trying to convince the San Francisco Port Commissioners that the community near by uses Heron's Head Park as a recreational place. This is a joke. Most of the children who go there are told lies taken from their school on field trips. The parents of the children think their children are going to bonafide school trips but any one trip to Heron's Head Park a Toxic Dump can and will adversely impact the health of anyone especially the youth. I am bringing this matter before the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Toxic and Substances Control, the City Health Department, and several other State and Federal agencies. I hope that they will do what is right to safeguard our children. It is wrong to allow our children to go anywhere near the Hunters Point Power plant for an extended period of time. Still worse to go to a toxic dump that is Heron's Head Park at the end of Cargo Way. |
