Emeryville, California, and the challenge of cleaning up poisoned land | Hacker News Reader

Emeryville, California, and the challenge of cleaning up poisoned land

slate.com

72 pointsta98854 comments

Emeryville started as a mudflat on the Bay where they'd drive cattle to slaughterhouses and leather tanners. It smelled real bad so they did it way out in the middle of nowhere.

It sort of became the place for messy industry, when just burying the bad junk was considered sufficient.

Company I worked for had major construction project for their campus expansion, but it took a while to clear the PG&E transformer storage lot of decades of PCB leakage.

Poly chlorinated biphenyls are nasty. Almost as nasty as the heavy metal contamination of the Sherwin-Williams Paint factory across the way.

The merely-poisonous-at-quantity horseradish processing facility was a breath of fresh air... and is now part of the Pixar-plex.

What with all the major construction over the past 30 years, there have been ongoing cleanup efforts. I don't know how realistic my optimism is, but it's way cleaner than it was in the 1980s.

Sounds remarkably similar to the Love Canal in the history of dirty industry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal

The Love Canal story is such an incredible cluster. When the chemical company sold the land to the city, they mentioned the waste and indicated they take no responsibility for it once the city acquires the land.

Then "Not long after having taken control of the land, the Niagara Falls School Board proceeded to develop the land, including construction activity that substantially breached containment structures in a number of ways, allowing previously trapped chemicals to seep out."

Everyone knew what was there, but for some odd reason they still decided to build a new school and a bunch of housing there.

>but for some odd reason they still decided to build a new school and a bunch of housing there.

The worst part about it is that it was then used to champion asinine legislation that hurts the people who want to do things right.

So now every municipality who wants to buy some old poisoned dump on the cheap (because it's poisoned and that restricts development) and not be idiots with it (e.g. turn it into a park or a parking lot or some other use not involving serious excavation) can't actually buy the land and do so because no sane company will sell it to them because they could just go and do something stupid and then turn around and make the company pay.

It's like the municipal equivalent of taking a free boat off someone's lawn in order to get an engine core and then acting like you got swindled when you find out it costs money or labor to get rid of a boat and then having the state pass a law making boat owners liable for disposal in perpetuity.

What a shame that companies are forced to pay for the poisons they produced while making profits off those same poisons.

Privatize the gains, socialize the losses of course.

FFS are you serious? These companies were following the law as it was written when they were doing these things.

How would you like it if you renovated a kitchen or added a deck and then 30yr later got sued because it wasn't adherent to the future code you didn't even know would exist?

You just can't run a society with retroactive liability like that.

My friend, the right thing to do is not half ass dispose of extremely toxic chemicals in a relatively populated area. It's the municipal equivalent of burying a land mine in your back yard, and putting a note in your deed that its there.

These areas mostly weren't that populated when these things were being disposed of and these companies were doing the "right thing" by the laws and common standards of the time.

Emeryville is near the tunnel: https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_...

Unfortunately, the tunnel appears to have been a victim of Covid. It may never reopen.

Same with a lot of neighborhoods in NYC, even trendy ones like Williamsburg and Greenpoint. Always research what your building is built on top of before you sign the lease.

I was shocked when I saw the asking rents for some "luxury" apartments built right next to the Gowanus canal.

Mountain View (location of Google HQ) has playgrounds where it is most likely unsafe to let your kids play. This is across the road from Google offices at Fairchild. https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/SiteProfiles/index.cfm?fus...

Yeah, there's also a rubbish dump converted to a amphitheater next door that randomly and spontaneously catches fire.

VOC contaminated soil at Fairchild, Intersil and Intel sites should be safe except after flooding from exceptionally heavy rain. Presumably there's a plan to shut the playgrounds, but it's America so who knows...

Perhaps it is true that the federal government has no standards for brownfield cleanup, but that does not mean no standards exist. The California Water Quality Control Board and the Department of Toxic Substances Control are responsible for coordinating cleanups of these sites to objective standards required for habitation, commercial development, schools, parks, or whatever. You can see the DTSC activities for the Sherwin-Williams site at https://www.envirostor.dtsc.ca.gov/public/profile_report?glo...

I wish I had more to point at rn but, hemp crops can help pull toxins from soil. Other crops too , can help with a "brown zone" but hemp (and it's cousin) get more press.

What do you do with the hemp once it has absorbed the toxins?

It depends. Some plants will break certain elements down into less toxic components. In the best case, the components are non-toxic and you can do whatever you want with it.

Nothing can breakdown lead and other toxic metals unless you have a neutron source.

I usually turn my old lead into gold. I've almost perfected the technique.

Dump it either on a toxic waste landfill or at a high temperature incineration site [1].

[1] https://www.novus-environmental.co.uk/blog/why-is-hazardous-...

Blaze it

No! a) these aren't the THC types so you won't get high and b) the hemp is a collector, so the nasty stuff would be in the tree.

This material is for industrial hemp, making rope and fabric and things.

Use cannabis plans to extract the pollution from the soil, then extract and concentrate the pollution from the biomass, then find a way to safely store it or break it down safely.

Even if true, that would only clean the top few inches of soil (whatever depth the roots go), right?

Normal toxic site cleanups that I have read about usually involve at minimum replacing topsoil to a depth of several feet.

Not to challenge your perspective because I agree to some degree, but hemp roots grow >=3,<=6 feet down due to the tap root.

Fungi also do this.

https://usfblogs.usfca.edu/sustainability/2022/02/03/mycorem...

and here I am, wondering if it's safe to eat stuff grown in my yard because there was a fire at a nuclear weapons production facility 30 miles from here, 50 years ago.

I suspect we live in the same area. I go mountain biking around there often, and I'm a little paranoid when the Santa Ana winds come through and stir up a lot of dust :\

You can probably just go around a bit with a geiger counter while kicking up some dust, right? Seems like it'd give you a good idea.

*not medical advice

Rocky flats?

If you collected a soil sample (a few spoons of dirt from 5-8 places in your garden, put in s plastic baggie.) Then get it tested - ask for a 32 element ICP. It's fairly cheap, 10-20$USD, gives you a run down of those 32 elements, and then you can see if there are any anomalies. They give you an answer in ppm (parts per million.) For example. Then you look at the published standards for soil quality. For example in your case, residential criteria. In your state. Find online. If you are more than a factor of 10 or 100 above that, in one element, you may have an issue. If there was a fire, and ashes blew your way, there could be detectable amounts. If there are, especially if those elements are suspected to originate from the fire. You can worry about further tests. Some organic compounds- by products of the fire may be there, and be measurable. And that gets more expensive.(~ $500) But you'll probably find everything is ok.

We build on a patch of land that used to be small workshop removing paint from furniture and the like. The shop operated way back in the 70s and 80s, as far as I know. Well, at least long enough ago that just dumping all the chemicals used in the backyard. That backyard is now our garden. We were obliged to conduct soil analysis. So, overall the soil was:

1. Super expensive to get rid of, the only "recycling" site willing to take it was 150 km away. Luckily, we managed to convince the construction company to only transport the bare minimum. The reminder was moved to the front and is now sitting under the car port

2. The contamination is bad enough to be illegal for a kindergarden or play ground, but good enough for a general park

3. covering it up with 50 cm of clean stuff gets it "kindergarden" legal, 75 cm get it good for growing crops. So we have a front half of the garden where we plant flowers and such and a back half were vegetables and herbs and so grow.

Depends on how much you want to grow, this is potential solution. And it also more gentle for your back: a Hochbeet (German, that's what t looks like:https://www.amazon.de/s?k=hochbeet&adgrpid=1199567838429561&...)

Damn easy to build yourself in any size you desire, it's basically an open box, on the bottom and top, of weather resistant hard wood (so don't buy on Amazon!). You fill the bottom with old branches and other pieces of wood, then you multiple layers of earth. You have to top it up so every other spring. And put it some stones to get the wood away from the moisture of the ground.

50 years, thirty miles from limited leak should be enough for the radiation to become negligible.

The metals are still toxic however. So I wouldn't recommend going for a geiger counter, instead try testing for chemical contamination.

Kind of impressed that slate managed to call an incorporated city in a different county a “suburb in sf”.

Emeryville is a 10 minute drive from SF, or 1 mile away from a BART station that gets you to SF in 15 minutes. It is a suburb of SF or a suburb in the SF Bay Area.

I would have called it a suburb of Oakland :)

No mention of the haunted IKEA either

What makes the IKEA haunted? I’ve been there a few times, but haven’t heard anything

Literal burial ground :)

https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-3008

Emeryville is not a suburb of anywhere. It has 30k jobs and only 12k people. If anything all the cities that surround it are suburbs of Emeryville.

It can be 30+ minutes in traffic. I did the Emeryville<->SF commute once when offices opened back up, then decided I needed to move back into the city.

SF is a suburb of SJ.

I was a SF resident for 15 years then moved to the East Coast. Some notes from East Coasters:

a) SF (the city) starts at the Golden Gate bridge and runs all the way to San Jose.

b) Redwood city, San Jose and Oakland - anything located 50 miles around SF - these are all suburbs of SF.

c) The entire state burns every summer.

As a San Jose resident this all seems pretty accurate TBH.

As a SoCal resident (c) is super accurate

It's kind of funny. People who live outside of SF will say "Oh, I live in a <insert city>, it's so nice".

Then when talking to anyone from outside the Bay Area it's "I live in San Francisco", even it's take an hour to drive to the city proper.

Basically if you fly out of SFO or Oakland Airport when you fly anywhere it's considered in this bucket for folks outside the area. It's such a huge difference and broad swath of cities/towns. From north of the bridge down to sf to Santa cruz to the east bay, San Jose and even further south. It's so much, so complex, and rich in ways not known by simply summarizing it all as SF suburbs.

Similarly, real expectations our friends from NYC when visiting Colorado: 1- Buffalo would be roaming the streets 2- people would be riding horses around town 3- we would be skiing everywhere

Their real responses to visiting: "Where are all the people"

The whole bay area is SF to anyone not from the area. The city/county boundaries aren’t what people care about when describing a general area.

Most people from london don’t live in “city of london”

We live in Greater London, with the Mayor of London (the City has a Lord Mayor). We tend to adjust our local government boundaries to match development, or create green belts to prevent sprawl.

In the greater SF Bay Area, the various cities and counties mostly already existed before the sprawl occurred. Adjusting local government boundaries at this point would be difficult. There are green belts, mostly in the surrounding hills.

Yeah, I live in London, but I have to say I say I live in Toronto (nearly 200km away) or else people think I'm in UK even if they know I'm in an American timezone

The whole bay area is also Silicon Valley to anyone not from the area

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