For weeks, San Francisco residents and officials have been slamming the Navy for waiting nearly a year to disclose that a radioactive heavy metal was found on the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, a Superfund site the federal government has been cleaning up for decades. On Monday evening, Navy officials took a rare step during a community meeting full of angry residents: They apologized.
The Navy took 11 months to report the discovery of plutonium 239, used primarily in nuclear weapons and power plants, to its regulatory partners, which include the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, the Regional Water Quality Control Board and the California Department of Public Health. San Francisco health officials have told the Chronicle that they weren’t informed about the finding until last month.
“I have really thought about the situation that’s occurred … on this issue, we did not do a good job,” Michael Pound, the Navy’s environmental coordinator who for the past two years has been overseeing the toxic cleanup at the Shipyard, told a room full of residents who gathered at 451 Galvez St. for a briefing from the Navy on the incident…