Treasure Island Children's Nightmare! School On Radioactive Dumpsite On SF Treasure Isla

US Navy Over 30 Years Dumped Massive Amounts Of Radioactive Material At Treasure Island Elementary School Which SF City Officals At TIDA Want To Make A Charter School

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-military-legacy-specialreport/special-report-the-toxic-legacy-of-a-california-naval-base-idUSKCN1PP1IX

After the war, the Navy established a training center for radiological decontamination on site, where the mock ship USS Pandemonium helped Navy students prepare for radiological warfare. The land-based vessel contained sealed pouches of cesium-137, a radioactive isotope. Students practiced decontamination by scrubbing the ship clean.

Over the next 30 years, the Navy dumped radioactive material and other contaminants in large rubbish pits. Starting in the 1960s, Navy families lived in housing on base.

On the corner of Avenue E and 11th Street, the Navy discarded used equipment and vessels in the “South Storage Yard.” That dumping ground later became an elementary schoolyard. On the corner of Avenue D and 11th Street, where the island’s daycare center is now located, the Navy buried trash and “burned debris,” a Navy survey found. Elsewhere, the Navy repaired ships containing glow-in-the-dark gauges covered with radioluminescent paint. The gauges were tossed in pits.

Reuters spoke with over a dozen former military families, none of whom were aware at the time they were living atop hazardous disposal pits.

“It was really kind of a neat place for a kid,” said Bo Ross, now 46, whose father was stationed on the island in the mid-1980s. Ross recalls digging in his backyard at 1249 Exposition Drive, finding pieces of rusted, flaky metal. “We could dig so far down.”

When the military shuttered the base in the 1990s, San Francisco was eager to develop. Until redevelopment started, city residents could rent the old military homes. Under a redevelopment law, one-third of homes would be offered to San Francisco’s homeless.