Gentrification Amid Contamination: The Redemption of Treasure Island Ariel Gans

Gentrification Amid Contamination:

The Redevelopment of Treasure Island

AUTHOR: Ariel Gans

ABSTRACT: Treasure Island’s environmental conditions, paired with its complex geography, position it at the junction of military brownfield site redevelopment, urban gentrification, and displacement. Using Treasure Island as a case study, this project engages the stakeholders of the Treasure Island Redevelopment Project to uncover how redevelopment decisions are made, who is included and excluded, and why, and to shed light on larger processes of military base redevelopment and displacement in high value land areas. The following analysis finds that the different ideas of what “successful” redevelopment looks like lead to conflict and exacerbation of social issues, environmental issues, and displacement.

INTRODUCTION

Across the Bay Area, brownfield sites are contributing to and are symptomatic of community decline—particularly in issues of disease, crime, education, and unemployment (Bonorris xiv-xv). On top of this, these spaces are often heavily polluted and located in economically poor communities of color, making their remediation and reuse inordinately complicated (“Overview”). Treasure Island, a 393-acre, man-made, former naval base in the San Francisco Bay is a modern-day example of this. The island is severely contaminated from over 50 years of use by the U.S. navy, is rapidly shrinking due to sea-level rise and subsidence, and has held low-income subsidized housing since 1997—when the navy leased it to the City of San Francisco. In 2017, the City of San Francisco signed a contract to construct up to 8,000 upscale housing units on the island starting in 2018, which will displace the majority of its 1,800 residents to move-in another 20,000 to 25,000 (qtd. in Brinklow). Its residents, as of 2012, comprised the third most diverse neighborhood in the U.S.: seventy percent were minorities, and the majority were low-income (Kolko). This paints a picture in which low-income people of color are living in subsidized housing in close proximity to toxic waste on an island that was declared safe by the City of San Francisco. It is known from extensive research, however, that racial and ethnic minority groups and low-income communities have significantly poorer health outcomes than other communities in America due to systematically higher rates of exposure to environmental hazards and social stressors such as poverty, poor housing quality, and social inequality—all of which are present on Treasure Island (Morello-Frosch et al. 879). The cumulative effects of these conditions must be properly addressed by legislators and decision-makers through policies that carefully consider individual susceptibility and social vulnerability. Thus, using Treasure Island as a case study, in the following paper I will evaluate what the history of decommissioning and redevelopment on Treasure Island can tell us about stakeholder processes and associated outcomes in developing former military bases in urban areas.

METHODS

I collected my data primarily online from peer-reviewed online research databases, reputable news sites, and national organization and corporation webpages—all of which were either primary or secondary sources. I also conducted an interview with Sheridan Noelani Enomoto, a Community Organizer and Policy Advocate with the grassroots organization, Greenaction, who I found and selected using a mini snowball sampling method from interviews I conducted for my previous iteration of this project on Berkeley zoning laws. Noelani Enomoto supplied valuable primary data and provided an additional perspective for me to interpret my results. I also attended the April Treasure Island Development Authority (TIDA) Board of Directors meeting at Treasure Island, and independently photographed the Treasure Island community. These pictures are primary sources and are listed in Appendix B.

RESULTS

When the navy left Treasure Island and leased it to the City of San Francisco in 1997, it left behind the former houses of naval families, which the city reopened as low-income subsidized housing despite health concerns and lingering toxicity (Environmental Protection Agency 22). Sheridan Noelani Enomoto, who works closely with the community leaders and residents of Treasure Island

as part of her role in Greenaction, says that the inherited buildings, many of which were built in the 1940’s, have varying amounts of asbestos, mold, periodic power outages, and neglected structural challenges such as leans and damaged foundations. This she has heard from dozens of residents, but it is not documented elsewhere in the research pool. However, given the frequent use of asbestos by the U.S. navy until the 1970s, and the prevalence of asbestos in 139 of 145 buildings found in the 1997 and 2015 Environmental Impact Reports on former naval base Bayview-Hunters Point Shipyard (which was sold with Treasure Island), it is reasonable to believe that the residents’ accounts of asbestos in Treasure Island’s buildings is reputable as well (“Hunters” 21-2). According to Rachel Morello-Frosch, Professor of Environmental Health Science at the University of California, Berkeley, policymakers struggle to recognize that a lack of habitable housing in neighborhoods is just as legitimate of an environmental stressor as polluted air or water is (Morello-Frosch 879). One’s environment includes that in which they live, work, and play in; thus, asbestos contamination, mold, and dangerous infrastructure are all environmental justice concerns in the built environment, particularly in poor communities of color (Bonorris xv).

Another layer of Treasure Island’s environmental history is its years of naval experimentation using chemical fires and nuclear explosions, the residual waste and contamination of which is highly radioactive. While this experimentation is not public knowledge, the City of San Francisco and Treasure Island residents are well- aware of it, which became clear at the TIDA meeting on April 16, 2020 (City and County of San Francisco). Evidently, the navy left over 1000 markers around the island to mark areas where waste materials with radioactive isotope Radium-226 were buried. Radium-226 was frequently used by the navy on ships and submarines to paint gauges, dials, and decks and make them glow-in-thedark. Its waste, however, constantly emits radiation and is highly linked to multiple forms of cancer, kidney damage, and birth defects. Even still, Radium-226 poses severe health risks when it contaminates groundwater and air supplies, as it enters into drinking water and can be breathed in excessively via the atmosphere (Illinois Institute for Environmental Quality, Chicago 63). Today, it is the source of 99 percent of all radiological contamination on Treasure Island, contaminating thousands of cubic yards of topsoil at 400 times EPA exposure limits in some places (Sabatini 1). This long-standing contamination makes Treasure Island physically unsafe and uninhabitable without serious remediation. Its exact degree of contamination is not publicly known, perhaps deliberately so, but its samples and estimates indicate the presence of unbelievably severe enviThe third layer in Treasure Island’s environmental history is its threatening sea-level rise and subsidence. According to a study by University of California, Berkeley researcher, Glen Martin, landfill zones are the most vulnerable Bay Area regions to rising sea levels, and are sinking at an alarming rate due to soil compaction (Martin 1). Treasure Island is suffering from both effects: the island’s buildings and roadways are sinking as much as 12.7 millimeters per year, while sea level is rising by one to three millimeters per year (Martin 2). As explained by University of California, Berkeley researchers, Manoochehr Shirzaei and Roland Bürrgmann, the northwest corner of Treasure Island is experiencing significant subsidence due to a combination of landfill compaction and stream outflows into the Bay—which deposits considerable amounts of silt and mud that subside as they compact and dry out (Shirzaei and Bürgmann 6). Such findings stress the importance of land subsidence considerations in future Bay Area planning, since it will magnify the impacts of future king tides and 100-year storms as climate change further exacerbates extreme weather patterns (see Appendix A, Figure 1).

In 1997, despite Treasure Island’s hazardous housing, contamination, and climate risk histories, the City of San Francisco exercised the 1994 Base Closure Community Redevelopment and Homeless Assistance Act, which permitted it to “solve” its homelessness issues through forcing the poor and people of color from its streets onto the otherwise uninhabitable island (Harvey 1). The housing plan to do this designated three hundred housing units for occupation by 1998 and out

Figure 1. Contaminated lands juxtaposed with areas predicted to flood in the case of a 100-year storm assuming one meter of sea level rise. Treasure Island maintains one of the highest densities of contaminated sites subject to future flooding in the area. Reprinted from San Francisco Baykeeper. (2017). Sea Level Rise and Pollution Risk to the Bay. Retrieved from https://baykeeper.org/shoreview/pollution. html

lined a contractual partnership between TIDA and the John Stewart Company to restore and remediate the units with limited success (Harvey 2). By 2017, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a $1.25 million contract with Associated Right of Way Services Inc., a private real estate company in Pleasant Hill, California, to oversee the eviction and relocation of Treasure Island’s then 1,800 residents so that their homes could be demolished and redeveloped (“Budget” 276). Of the 425 market-rate households, 220 were entitled to either a down payment from the city for a new unit or a Transition Housing Unit in a TIDA building. However, the 205 other households received only “advisory services” to compensate for their relocation (Brinklow 2).

According to the contract, the redevelopment will include 8,000 new residential units, (2,173 of which will serve as affordable housing), and will accommodate 20,000 to 25,000 people. The plans also include up to 500 hotel rooms, 550,000 square feet of restaurants, retail, office and commercial space, a marina, 300 acres of parks and open space, and a new toll tax on the island. To market this, the TIDA advertises the future version of the island as a “picturesque community” and pledges to dedicate one percent of the project’s overall budget to public art installations, which, according to the San Francisco Arts Commission, is “an unparalleled opportunity for bold, imaginative, and forward-thinking contemporary art” (qtd. in Brinklow). The dissonance of this glorifying, upper-class perspective from the reality of those on the other side of Treasure Island’s displacement processes marks a consistent flaw in the project stakeholders’ agendas, which is already reflected in the project’s emerging outcomes.

DISCUSSION

Treasure Island’s naval history, hazardous homes, radioactive contamination, and unique location in a high-rent region all distinctly intersect with its inordinately low-income population. The outcomes of this intersection align with established patterns of environmental injustice, including stark racial and socioeconomic disparities between those who live in close proximity to commercial hazardous waste and those who do not. A study by Robin Saha on communities near commercial hazardous waste facilities found that, in the U.S., over 9.2 million people live within 1.8 miles of at least one facility, more than 5.1 million of whom are people of color, including 2.5 million Latinx and 1.8 million African Americans (Saha 52). Saha found that neighborhoods with commercial hazardous waste facilities (host neighborhoods) on average are way more densely populated than non-host neighborhoods, and have significantly different racial compositions, with an average of 56 percent residents of color versus 30 percent in nonhost neighborhoods— about half as many. Other significant differences include higher poverty rates, 10 percent lower mean household incomes, and 14 percent lower mean housing values in host neighborhoods than nonhost neighborhoods (Saha 55). Across the board, zip code areas with higher levels of hazardous waste activity have higher percentages of residents of color and poverty rates relative to those without, which signals a serious issue and systematic injustice, both socially and politically (Saha 39). Given these patterns, it is no wonder why people of color and the poor are consistently more vulnerable to the negative impacts of hazardous waste facilities—they are disproportionately exposed to them. Despite the fact that Treasure Island itself does not house a hazardous waste facility, its residents are exposed to radioactive waste every day to a dangerous degree, which is directly tied to their racial and economic composition. The scope of these patterns and correlations span well beyond Treasure Island, but it is through the lens of these larger trends that one can better understand Treasure Island’s outcomes.

The Treasure Island community not only fits into patterns of disproportionate chemical exposure, but it is also an environmental justice community itself. Environmental justice encompasses the right of every person to live and work in a clean and healthy environment—that is, without significant environmental risks and stressors impacting them (Bonorris viii). According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), risk is the probability of exposure to an environmental stressor leading to human or ecosystem harm. When the EPA assesses risks, it looks at environmental stressors to characterize the risk’s nature and magnitude of harm. The stressor’s risk level is then determined based on its degree of environmental presence, community exposure, and toxicity (Environmental Protection Agency). We can use this template to assess the environmental justice of the Treasure Island community by looking specifically at the island’s Radium-226 levels. As previously mentioned, Radium-226’s environmental presence is extremely strong, given it is the source of 99 percent of all radiological contamination on Treasure Island. It contaminates thousands of cubic yards of the island’s topsoil, thereby strongly exposing the community to it. While the isotope itself has a relatively long half life of 1,600 years, its cumulative presence is 400 times the EPA’s exposure limit, making it extremely toxic (Sabatini 1). This concentration of hazardous waste in the Treasure Island community further signals environmental injustice because it indicates that residents experience a disproportionate amount of environmental harms. This long-standing contamination makes Treasure Island physically unsafe and uninhabitable without serious remediation. Even with the exact degree of contamination being unknown to the public, perhaps deliberately so, its samples indicate the pres-

Another right encompassed by environmental justice is to give those potentially affected by environmental decisions a meaningful role in relevant decision-making processes without being marginalized (Bonorris viii). This is yet another way in which Treasure Island community members are victims of environmental injustice. According to Noelani Enomoto, the city managers who oversee the subsidized housing units “have not been very favorable to the residents to say the least.” While Noelani Enomoto declined to name names, she explained that these managers have huge impacts on whether residents choose to speak out about their living conditions and abuses. In the past, residents who brought attention to Treasure Island’s environmental issues faced sudden eviction, leading to a now common fear of speaking out. There is an ongoing abuse of power that bullies Treasure Island residents out of the island’s decision-making processes and willfully violates their tenant rights. Confirmation of this trend on Treasure Island is difficult to verify with social science literature, if not impossible. However, Noelani Enomoto did advise me to look on Treasure Island for randomly abandoned homes that were surrounded by inhabited homes, which I found but was hesitant to photograph (see Appendix B, Image 3). Something that Noelani Enomoto did not warn me about, however, that I found when I visited the site was the prevalence of mobile homes around the island. I found multiple lots with mobile homes parked parallel to each other, with people coming in and out of them and other obvious signs of use (see Appendix B, Image 5). While I can’t confidently trace why those lots were full of mobile homes, they do signal to me issues in housing availability, safety, vulnerability and perhaps the high cost of property on the island. Regardless, assuming that Noelani Enomoto’s community sentiments are true, the Treasure Island community would, in yet another respect, be an environmental justice community facing environmental injustice. Widespread community participation in environmental decision-making leads to policy decisions that better reflect the whole constituency, and contribute to a more vibrant democracy (Bonorris viii).

While there is already considerable evidence that Treasure Island’s community is experiencing environmental health disparities, further public health research is critical to the future of its environmental injustices. As demonstrated by University of Massachusetts, Amherst professor Manuel Pastor Jr. in his study of environmental inequities, and historical records, a cumulative-exposure approach is crucial to illuminating health disparities, because such trends take time to evolve following the inequitable planning policies and decisions that exacerbate them. If one can do that on Treasure Island, one can perhaps

Image 3. A two-story low-income housing unit. It is identical to those on the left and right of the frame. The home on the lower right appears abandoned. Gans, Ariel (2019).

find inequalities in the susceptibility of its community members to toxins due to long-term stressors and potentially their link to disparities in negative health outcomes (Pastor 123). Ultimately, Treasure Island’s environmental health risks are serious, geographically disproportionate, and discriminatory violations of human rights. Across the United States, pollution is concentrated in communities of color and low-income neighborhoods and thus less politically powerful areas, leaving their residents to not only bear a disproportionate amount of environmental pollution, but also to face disproportionate obstacles in the enforcement of environmental protections and clean-up of that increased pollution (Bonorris xv).

CONCLUSION

Ultimately, the City of San Francisco writes the narrative of Treasure Island that is passed on to the wider public media outlets, eclipsing that of Treasure Island’s gruesome naval past, but failing to erase it. However, given numerous primary resource documents and the

Image 5. A fenced-in lot of crammed mobile homes amidst abandoned shipping containers, a view of San Francisco in the distance, and two active bulldozers working on the hill. Gans, Ariel (2019). Spring 2020 / Perennial

experiences of Sheridan Noelani Enomoto in engaging with and listening to the concerns of Treasure Island residents, we are able to see the alternative, more complex side of Treasure Island’s redevelopment story. This side is continuously censored by city officials, who use their power to constrict the ability of current residents to speak out on the dangers of living on contaminated land, as well as the failure of the city to redevelop it in a way that benefits them and prioritizes their voices. These dynamics create conflict between those who want to better Treasure Island and those who must live with that betterment. Without consistent communication, inclusion, and prioritization of community member voices in the redevelopment and rehabilitation of Treasure Island, the city of San Francisco will continue to push its idealistic vision of successful redevelopment until it not only displaces the island’s community, but also fails to recognize and resolve its persisting environmental issues.

Biases in the framing of Treasure Island’s environmental, public health, economic, and housing issues in the media and at TIDA Board of Directors meetings translate into bias in the island’s decision-making processes and planning decisions, directly resulting in patterns of displacement. As made apparent by my research, there are dramatically different ways of talking about the same issue, in this case remediating Treasure Island, and particularly what successful remediation looks like. TIDA’s language around the redevelopment plan such as how the project’s design “draws heavily upon the natural setting and features of the islands” and “features intentional contrasts that will add interest for all who live on or visit the Islands” expose a glorification of gentrification that completely neglects the history of the space: who lived there and the astounding environmental hazards that still remain. Instead, the City of San Francisco prioritized sustainability and creating an artificial “connection with the ecological and experiential qualities of the Bay” on a man-made island (“Treasure/Yerba”). This deliberate language and framing by planners and developers with the City of San Francisco worked its way into the actual planning documents and media publicity far more than that of community members and community advocates, and that is directly tied to the environmental injustices and systematic discrimination discussed above. The outcome of failing to establish mutual respect, communication, and teamwork between issue stakeholders translates into the domination of one narrative and their vision of success, which ultimately perpetuates existing inequities between the two interest groups. tended at Treasure Island is that the intentions of the project’s directors, developers, and planners are ultimately good-hearted; they seemed to genuinely want the best life for those who will one day live on Treasure Island. However, it is their mutual cognitive disconnect between how we have historically treated nature and the consequences of those actions. It is clear that they either rationalize or do not realize the extent to which those currently living on Treasure Island are suffering, excluded, and affected by their decisions—let alone the extent to which the island needs to be remediated in order for it to be habitable contamination-wise, and that is before considering its issues of sea-level rise and subsidence. Despite seemingly good intentions, it is through the utter removal of marginalized community members from the project’s decision-making process that their stake in its outcome is forgotten completely. Not only do their ideas of success get erased, but they themselves get erased from the prevailing vision of successful redevelopment. It is in this way that we perpetuate the marginalization of low-income people of color and keep alive the legacy of environmental discrimination.

Poor government enforcement and remediation of environmental, health, and infrastructural issues is a form of institutional discrimination and has contributed to the worsening of such issues. It is well-known that hazardous wastes pose serious risks to health, property, and quality of life, which is why no one wants to live on or near them. As a result, contaminated brownfield sites have often followed the path of least political resistance, which have typically been poor communities of color, who have limited scientific and legal resources (Saha 50). In the case of Treasure Island’s redevelopment as a contaminated brownfield site, while the project ultimately expands the housing capacity of Treasure Island, it amplifies unresolved environmental issues and racialized displacement practices such that private stakeholders control the direction of the island’s redevelopment and impose their agendas onto it without sufficiently involving or prioritizing the community it concerns the most, who incidentally are also the ones who need the space the most.

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

Given the U.S. Navy and the City of San Francisco’s consistently inappropriate responses to Treasure Island’s severe contamination, sea-level rise, housing issues, and resident vulnerability, there is reason to conclude that no one should live there at all. While knocking down the asbestos and mold-ridden homes and rebuilding new ones is a step toward habitability, the fact that the redevelopment plans to displace the majority of those who once lived on the island such that they cannot benefit from the remediation they need most begs the question of who the City of San Francisco is

remediating Treasure Island for. It is my belief that the city should put the needs of the Treasure Island community first in their redevelopment plans given the historical patterns of discriminatory displacement and exposure to environmental harms that they currently fit into. Thus, we need long-term systematic policy changes that clean-up and reinvest in brownfield properties, lessen developmental pressures, and protect the environment—which can only happen if governments, communities, and other stakeholders work together to sustainably recycle Treasure Island. A core example of this type of reconciliation is in new District 6 Supervisor of San Francisco, Matt Haney,’s decision to begin holding Town Hall meetings periodically on Treasure Island. This helped Haney to directly engage and address the concerns of Treasure Island’s residents and acknowledge their status as citizens of San Francisco. No other District 6 Supervisor had previously been receptive to this idea, but by getting Haney and other relevant politicians to speak to Treasure Island residents face-to-face, they are forced to break their narrative of Treasure Island being a great place. Thus, one policy move would be to legally bring together leaders and advocates from both sides of the issue into the same room to share their ideas and concerns directly.

Communities of racial or ethnic minorities and people of low socioeconomic status are particularly vulnerable to environmental and social stressors not just in Treasure Island or the Bay Area, but systemically across the country. Thus, policies that enforce more holistic and transparent approaches to the pursuit of scientific data and decision-making procedures affecting these communities are needed. These multilateral, place-based regulatory interventions would mitigate the cumulative impacts of environmental and social stressors on the health of disadvantaged communities by catering to the individual issues and nuances of each site, which, as seen in the case of Treasure Island, can be quite unique and complex. One way I propose doing this is by modeling a new policy off of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which forces federal decision-makers to seriously consider the environmental impacts of federal actions before moving them forward. In this procedure, the affected community is given a means of commenting on the process and working with stakeholders to mitigate its foreseen impacts. The Act and its governing council, the Council on Environmental Quality, has issued guidelines to ensure that historically marginalized groups maximize their participation and communicate its impact on vulnerable communities. California has already passed a smaller-scale version of NEPA called the California Environmental Quality Act, but it requires expansion if it is going to be able to aid an issue of environmental justice of the scale of the Treasure Island redevelopment project (Bonorris xiii). Using Treasure Island as a case study, I conclude that current environmental policy should be broadened and shifted from individual pollutants to better consider the cumulative impacts of exposures and vulnerabilities endured by those who live in largely low-income, racial or ethnic minority neighborhoods (Morello-Frosch et al. 879). This builds off of the 17 Principles of Environmental Justice, drafted and adopted at the National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in Washington D.C. in 1991, which became a defining document for the grassroots environmental justice movement (Delegates to the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit). These principles need to become stronger components of environmental policy, particularly principles that maintain that communities can speak for themselves and should be protected from disproportionate environmental degradation. The legacy of Western culture shows us that outsiders have a tendency to act as saviors, coming into complicated situations uninvited. Though these outsiders may have good ideas or good intentions that have a potential for positive change, they often do more harm than good. This is especially dismaying when community members can often create better solutions for themselves if given the resources to do so. This is to say that any environmental policy moving forward must put community members and community values at the forefront. Ultimately, it is not about what I or anyone else feels is the resolution to these issues; instead, I believe that we should support what the community feels is the solution.

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Figure 3a. Development plan for Treasure Island in which 300 acres are set aside for open space, while the remaining 93 house 20,000- 25,000 people. Reprinted from Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP. (2016). Treasure Island Master Plan. Retrieved from https://www.som.com/projects/treasure_island_master_plan

3b. Grid overview of Treasure Island redevelopment project with section labels and space allotments. Reprinted from Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP. (2016). Treasure Island Master Plan. Retrieved from https://www.som.com/projects/treasure_island_master_plan

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Figure 1. Contaminated lands juxtaposed with areas predicted to flood in the case of a 100-year storm assuming one meter of sea level rise. Treasure Island maintains one of the highest densities of contaminated sites subject to future flooding in the area. Reprinted from San Francisco Baykeeper. (2017). Sea Level Rise and Pollution Risk to the Bay. Retrieved from https://baykeeper.org/shoreview/pollution. html

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Figure 2. Overview of Treasure Island as it looked prior to the redevelopment project. Reprinted from CMG Landscape Architecture. (2016). Project Treasure Island. Retrieved from https://www.cmgsite. com/project/treasure-island/treasure-island-master-planning/project-treasur e-island-ti_ybi_exist_1_200/

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Image 1. San Francisco Fire Department Gans, Ariel (2019)

Image 4. Abandoned and neglected naval building amongst rows of other abandoned naval buildings in the center of the island. Gans, Ariel (2019)

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Image 5. A fenced-in lot of crammed mobile homes amidst abandoned shipping containers, a view of San Francisco in the distance, and two active bulldozers working on the hill. Gans, Ariel (2019).

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Image 2. Large construction crane and other Hazardous Waste Unit ambulance parked in equipment obstructing view of Bay Bridge from Treasure Island. Gans, Ariel (2019).

Image 6. Multiple indicators construction machines and restriction signs lined in front of the island’s San Francisco facing perimeter. Gans, Ariel (2019).

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