Graduation Year
2019
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Environmental Analysis
Reader 1
Teresa Sabol Spezio
Reader 2
Brinda Sarathy
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2018 Lawrie Mankoff
Abstract
Bayview-Hunters Point, a neighborhood in southeastern San Francisco, has long been one of the most impoverished and polluted areas in the city. In an example of environmental racism, much of the African American community in San Francisco was segregated to Bayview-Hunters Point by racist housing policies and practices. This neighborhood was home to the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard (HPNS), which was widely polluted with hazardous wastes from shipyard operation as well as radioactive contamination from the Navy Radiological Defense Laboratory established on this property. The former HPNS was made a federal Superfund site in 1989 and has been in remediation by the Navy since, with the goal of eventual transfer of the land to the city of San Francisco for redevelopment into residential and commercial areas. Throughout the history of the HPNS, government agencies have obscured both radioactive contamination and the nearby disadvantaged community in pursuit of military and economic power. As a result, the forces of redevelopment have outpaced remediation in Hunters Point. In this thesis, I argue that in continuing the environmental racism marginalizes the community in Bayview-Hunters Point and working to hide the contamination at the nearby Superfund site government agencies, primarily the Navy and city government, have fostered the conditions for green gentrification to occur, which could have ill effects on both the longstanding community and new residents.
Recommended Citation
Mankoff, Lawrie, "Radioactive Contamination, Superfund Remediation, and Green Gentrification in San Francisco’s Hunters Point" (2019). Scripps Senior Theses. 1328.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/1328
