UC Illegally Buried "Thousands Of Truckloads" of Toxic Soil In Richmond, State Says

by Berkeley Daily Planet (reposted)

Tue, Jul 3, 2007 9:02AM

Tuesday, July 3, 2007 : UC Berkeley and a Swiss multinational must clean up thousands of truckloads of toxic-laden soil illegally buried at the Richmond site of a planned 1,330-unit housing complex, state officials ordered Friday.

"What we had feared has been verified," said Assemblymember Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley, Richmond). "It confirms my fears and the fears of the neighbors, which have been shown to be terribly correct."

Much of the contaminated earth and cinders buried at Campus Bay came from the adjacent, university-owned Richmond Field Station, according to a pair of certified letters sent to the university and AstraZeneca.

The letter to UC Berkeley and the Swiss agro-pharmaceutical conglomerate from Charlene Williams, chief of the Department of Toxic Substances Control's (DTSC) Enforcement and Energy Response Program for Northern California, outlined the violations.

She also ordered the university and AstraZeneca to begin to establish "within 15 days of receipt of the Summary of Violations" a schedule for removing and treating thousands of truckloads of contaminated soil from a site where 1,330 homes had been planned atop a small mesa of contaminated earth

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