Committee to Bridge the Gap

— Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, SF — contamination and reports

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From Committee to Bridge the Gap

A History of Extensive Radioactivity Use

ON JULY 16, 1945, THE USS INDIANAPOLIS DEPARTED Hunters Point Naval Shipyard carrying components of a bomb code-named “Little Boy,” including half of the highly enriched uranium then in existence in the world. Two hours later, after receiving word that the “Trinity” test of the first nuclear explosion on earth had succeeded earlier that day at Alamogordo, New Mexico, the Indianapolis was allowed to leave San Francisco harbor carrying its cargo to the island of Tinian in the Pacific. On August 6, a plane christened the Enola Gay left Tinian and dropped the assembled atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

About a year later, the nuclear arms race returned to Hunters Point. The first post-war nuclear tests, called OPERATION CROSSROADS, were conducted at the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific, involving 42,000 sailors and more than 240 target and support ships. The tests went badly awry, contaminating the ships. More than 80 of the most contaminated ships, from this and subsequent tests, were brought back for “decontamination” to Hunters Point, then, as now, a predominantly low-income Black community. This process involved sandblasting the radioactivity off the ships in the open air, transferring the contamination from the ships to the surrounding area.

In 1989, Hunters Point was made a Superfund site, listed as one of the most polluted places in the country. Since then, the cleanup has been botched beyond description. CBG, working with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, pried out of EPA and made available to the news media EPA documents concluding that the Navy’s contractor had apparently fabricated or otherwise falsified radioactivity measurements at 90-97% of the survey units at the site. $250 million in taxpayer money was wasted; the tests would have to be redone.

CBG has issued a series of detailed reports (which you can find on the column to the left) on the problems at Hunters Point, which have been given significant press attention (e.g., front page of the San Francisco Chronicle, major TV news stories on NBC Bay Area). These studies— based on intensive research by CBG staffers Devyn Gortner, Maria Caine, Taylor Altenbern, Haakon Williams, and Audrey Ford, and a score of interns—disclosed that the problems went far beyond the fabrication of measurements. CBG revealed that radioactivity use at the site was far more extensive than generally realized, with numerous pathways for transporting contamination throughout the entire shipyard and into the neighboring community; that 90% of sites at Hunters Point had not been tested at all; that for those sites that were, 90% of the radionuclides of concern were not tested for. We showed that the cleanup standards employed by the Navy were decades out of date and far, far weaker than current EPA standards, which are required to be used at Superfund sites.

We disclosed that the Navy, after having promised to remove the contamination so that the site could be released for unrestricted residential use, shifted gears and decided to leave much of the contamination and just cover it with thin layers of soil or asphalt. Because the site is planned to be the largest redevelopment project in San Francisco history since the 1906 earthquake, those thin covers will have to be torn up and the contaminated soil beneath them excavated to build the more than 12,000 homes planned, exposing and lofting the contamination into the air. Drs. Howard Wilshire and William Bianchi prepared companion reports that showed that plant roots and burrowing animals would also bring the contamination back to the surface. We have prepared detailed critiques of testing plans by the Navy and the health department showing that they were incapable of detecting contamination at the levels requiring cleanup.

Three quarters of a century after the nuclear arms race set sail from Hunters Point, the toxic legacy remains for that impacted community, a victim of environmental injustice. We will continue our efforts to assist them, as they frankly have no one on their side from the parties responsible—the Navy, its contractors, and the captured regulators. Hunters Point is a striking reminder that the nuclear arms race threatens us globally and locally.

[This is in addtion to the Navy’s nuclear waste dump offshore San Francisco and the radioactive USS Independence which the Navy filled with nuclear waste and sank south of San Francisco, near Half Moon Bay in what is now the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.]

Hunters Point Reports

Report 1: Hunters Point Naval Shipyard: The Nuclear Arms Race Comes Home – October 2018

Report 2: The Great Majority of Hunters Point Sites Were Never Sampled for Radioactive Contamination — And the Testing That Was Performed Was Deeply Flawed – October 2018

Report 3: Hunters Point Shipyard Cleanup Used Outdated and Grossly Non-Protective Cleanup Standards – October 2018

Report 4: FROM CLEANUP TO COVERUP: How the Navy Quietly Abandoned Commitments to Clean Up Hunters Point Naval Shipyard and is Instead Covering Up Much of the Contamination – August 2019

Companion Reports Issued with Report 4:

Plant Uptake of Radionuclides and Toxic Chemicals from Contaminated Soils Below a Shallow Soil Cover by William Bianchi, PhD, August 2019

Bioturbation, Erosion, and Seismic Activity Make Shallow Soil Covers Ineffective at Isolating Contamination by Howard Wilshire, PhD, August 2019

Additional CBG Hunters Point Critiques:  

Critique of the Navy’s Draft Fifth Five-Year Review – May 2024

Critique of the Navy’s Protectiveness Review of its HPNS Building Cleanup Standards – November 2019

Critique of the Navy’s Protectiveness Review of its HPNS Soil Cleanup Standards – September 2019

Critique of the Navy’s Draft Five Year Review – September 2018

Critique of the California Department of Public Health Work Plan for a Partial Gamma Survey of Parcel A-1 Hunters Point Naval Shipyard – July 2018

Critique of the Work Plan for Retesting of Parcel G Hunters Point Naval Shipyard – August 2018

Critique of the Navy’s Parcel F Proposed Plan for Offshore Sediment Cleanup Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Superfund Site – May 2018

https://www.committeetobridgethegap.org/hunters-point-reports1/

— Implications of Weakening Radiation Protection Standards – Dan Hirsch Presentation to NRC, July 2025

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Three days before he died, Dan Hirsch gave this presentation to the NRC.

From Committee to Bridge the Gap

On July 16, 2025, Dan Hirsch, President of Committee to Bridge the Gap, gave a presentation to the NRC about the devastating consequences that would result from abandoning the linear no-threshold model of low-dose radiation exposure. Dan urged the NRC to tighten, not weaken, radiation protection standards.

Dan’s presentation was part of NRC’s public meeting to receive public input about President Trump’s Executive Order 14300 Section 5(b), which directs the NRC to “reconsider” its use of the linear no-threshold model of low-dose radiation exposure. The linear no-threshold model has long been the bedrock of radiation protection; without it, the public could be exposed to levels of radiation 100x to 1,000x higher than is allowed today.

Download the slides from Dan’s presentation by clicking here.

In 2021, Dan gave a presentation on a related topic – the long history of underestimating radiation risks – to the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. Check out this 2021 presentation by clicking here.

https://www.committeetobridgethegap.org/2025/08/11/implications-of-weakening-radiation-protection-standards-dan-hirsch-presentation-to-nrc/

— In Memoriam: Daniel Hirsch of Committee to Bridge the Gap

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From Committee to Bridge the Gap
News Release
July 27, 2025

With deep sadness but also with heartfelt gratitude for a life well lived, the Committee to Bridge the Gap announces the death of its founder, Daniel O. Hirsch, on July 19th 2025 at his home in Ben Lomond, California. CBG board chair Jack Miles had earlier accepted Hirsch’s resignation as president of Bridge the Gap on the grounds of grievously worsening health. Anthony Zepeda, CBG secretary, had agreed to succeed Hirsch as president and had begun transitional meetings with CBG staff.

Committee to Bridge the Gap came formally into being as an organization in a meeting at UCLA after Hirsch had returned home to Los Angeles, and in its early years the organization addressed a variety of ongoing social and political issues, notably including the cause of peace and reconciliation in Israel/Palestine. Gradually, however, and particularly after Hirsch’s appointment as director of the Program on Environmental and Nuclear Policy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, nuclear safety became CBG’s central public-interest mission. Just two days before his death, Hirsch delivered a powerful public comment at a virtual hearing contesting Executive Order 14300 radically reducing radiation safety standards. In that spirit, the work of CBG will continue.

Privately, Hirsch, who never married, lived a life of monastic simplicity and frugality. Though an atheist, he maintained a close spiritual relationship with the sisters of Redwoods Monastery, in rural Humboldt County. By the terms of his will, the wealth he had accumulated through a lifetime of willed poverty will go to the poor. As the crippling effects of chronic Q-fever progressively incapacitated him, Dan Hirsch chose not to prolong a life whose continuation would only squander the wealth he had destined for others. May his memory be a blessing, most especially for all who sacrifice private comfort for the public good and all who when they speak truth to power, do so modestly and with meticulous attention to all the facts.

CBG will announce memorial services for Hirsch when plans are complete. Mourners may make donations in his honor to Doctors Without Borders doctorswithoutborders.org or Give Directly givedirectly.org

https://www.committeetobridgethegap.org/2025/07/27/dan-hirsch-has-passed-away/

From Smart Meter Science Substack
by Patricia Burke
July 31, 2025

Dan was the Founder of CBG, as well as Director, Program on Environmental and Nuclear Policy, at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

See interviews with Dan Hirsch, posted at the UCLA Library’s Center for Oral History Research.

As reflected on CBG’s homepage, if it was about Santa Susana Field Lab, Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, or San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant, Dan was on it.

Dan just testified at educational sessions intended to push back against the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s attempt to do away with the Linear, No Threshold theory of ionizing radiation’s hazards to human health. (See the link to Dan’s slideshow he presented as public comment to NRC on July 16, 2025, posted at NIRS’s website, here.) He had worked at the cutting edge of protecting human health against the nuclear industry’s artificial radioactive pollution, for many decades, including at the National Academy of Science.

As documented in the MSNBC documentary film In the Shadow of the Valley, which also features interviews with Dan, at Santa Susana, his graduate students unearthed the 1959 meltdown, which had been covered up for 20 years.

He testified repeatedly about the seismic, and other risks, at Diablo Canyon, including before U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer’s (Democrat-California) Environment and Public Works Committee, more than a decade ago, as well as at grassroots sessions, such as those of San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, a few years ago.

Around two decades ago, Dan stopped a nuclear power industry spokesman dead in his tracks — not for the first time. On an NPR interview about energy and environment, focused on nuclear power, the industry spokesman kept bringing up climate protection. At one point, Dan said “I actually care about the climate,” which stopped the industry spokesman from disingenuously bringing it up again.

See articles authored or co-authored by Dan, posted at The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

CBG’s website also posts many of Dan’s Publications, as well as those of its colleagues.

As anti-nuclear attorney Terry Lodge of Toledo, Ohio shared with the Ohio Nuclear-Free Network about the devastating news:

Dan was the ultra serious, savagely sarcastic, brilliant mentor to many a generation of antinuclear activists. A loss of great moment.

“Rest in peace and know that your impact on this world will never be forgotten.”

Condolences to his family, friends, and colleagues…

https://smartmeterscience.substack.com/p/in-memoriam-daniel-hirsch-of-committee

— Los Angeles: DOE breaks agreement to clean up Santa Susana Field Lab contamination; may leave behind 94%

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For action and upcoming meetings, go to http://www.ssflworkgroup.org

From the Ventura County Star

February 11, 2017

Our region has just been hit by two significant events that affect the health of our community.

While we have long awaited some relief for our drought, torrential rainstorms inundated the Santa Susana Field Lab, one of the most polluted places in the state. Runoff from far lesser storms in recent years resulted in more than 200 instances in which highly toxic and radioactive contaminants migrated off site at levels in excess of state pollution limits, and one can only imagine the effect these recent large storms have had.

Around the same time, the Department of Energy broke its solemn cleanup commitments and announced it would leave as much as 94 percent of the soil contaminated at the field lab site not cleaned up. Unless people rise up and our elected officials act strongly to enforce the promises, people in neighboring communities will be at perpetual risk from migrating radioactivity and toxic chemicals.

The field lab housed 10 nuclear reactors, of which at least four suffered accidents, including a partial nuclear meltdown in 1959. There was a factory for fabricating reactor fuel rods out of plutonium, perhaps the most dangerous substance on earth. In a “hot lab” there, highly irradiated nuclear fuel rods shipped in from around the nation were cut apart, with several radioactive fires.

It illegally burned radioactive and chemically hazardous wastes in open air pits, by shooting barrels of the waste with rifles to ignite them, with the toxic plumes blown over surrounding communities. It conducted tens of thousands of rocket tests, many using very dangerous fuels, and then flushed out the engines with a million gallons of toxic solvents that were allowed to simply percolate into the soil and groundwater.

The result of this shameful violation of basic environmental protections is widespread contamination of groundwater, surface water and soil with strontium-90, cesium-137, plutonium-239, perchlorate, PCBs, dioxins, heavy metals, volatile organic compounds and much more. And because the site sits in the hills overlooking more than 500,000 people within 10 miles, the contamination wants to flow off site to the places and people below.

The site has been fined more than $1 million in recent years for allowing pollutants to migrate off the property at levels deemed unsafe for people or the environment. And as long as the site doesn’t get cleaned up, that will continue.

These awful materials cause cancers including leukemia, genetic defects, neurological and developmental disorders and other health problems. A federally funded study by Dr. Hal Morgenstern of the University of Michigan found a greater than 60 percent increase in key cancers in people living near the site compared with people living farther away. Another government-funded study by a team from UCLA led by Dr. Yoram Cohen concluded that numerous pollutants from the site had migrated off site at levels in excess of EPA levels of concern.

For these reasons, the community was joyous in 2010 when the Department of Energy and NASA signed legally binding agreements with the California Department of Toxic Substances Control requiring all contamination that could be detected in the soil to be cleaned up by 2017.

It is now 2017 and the cleanup hasn’t even begun. And the DOE just issued a draft environmental impact statement breaking the 2010 cleanup agreement and saying it will only consider three options, none of which comply with its past commitments.

One would leave 34 percent of the contamination in place. A second would leave 86 percent. And the third would walk away from a staggering 94 percent of the contaminated soil, just leaving it in place. The 2010 agreement barred any consideration of leave-in-place alternatives.

The DOE has essentially thumbed its nose at California. Even if the cleanup agreement didn’t exist, the decision on how much toxic pollution to clean up doesn’t rest with the polluter, but with the state regulator. The DOE can’t decide to just walk away from most of the contamination.

But the state has been remarkably silent so far in response to this assault on its authority. Indeed, it has in its own actions undercut the cleanup agreement it signed. Toxic Substances Control is years late on its own environmental impact report and has been busy undermining the cleanup in other ways as well.

In 2010, we were promised that, with a couple of narrow exceptions, all of the soil contamination that could be detected would be cleaned up. Now it appears likely than close to none will be, and the people in the area will continue to be at perpetual risk from migrating radioactive and toxic contamination — unless they speak out now, loud and clear, and their elected representatives do the same.

Robert Dodge, a family physician in Ventura, serves on the boards of Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and Citizens for Peaceful Resolutions. Daniel Hirsch is director of the Program on Environmental and Nuclear Policy at UC Santa Cruz and president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap.

 

http://www.vcstar.com/story/opinion/columnists/2017/02/11/dodge-hirsch-santa-susana-field-lab-broken-promises/97766134/

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