San Diego Coastkeeper
Law & Policy Clinic Campaigns
Shipyards & Sediment Remediation
Coastkeeper is now challenging these mega-companies to undertake sediment remediation efforts to undo the damage they have done over the past 40 years. The San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board recently tried to use the AET methodology, previously proposed for the Campbell site, to set cleanup levels for Southwest Marine and National Steel and Shipbuilding Company ('NASSCO'). AET values, which are the contaminant concentrations at which negative biological effects are always observed, would have left San Diego with among the most contaminated one percent of sediments in the nation after “cleanup.”
With Coastkeeper threatening litigation if such levels were set, the Board decided to allow the shipyards to conduct their own assessment of the site in order to determine if more stringent cleanup levels are feasible. The integrity of this study is questionable given that it is being funded by two shipyards that have long maintained that the expense of removing all of their contaminated sediments is prohibitive. Unprecedented profits and lucrative contracts, though, tell a different story as NASSCO (a wholly owned subsidiary of General Dynamics Corporation) was awarded a $709 million Navy contract in 2001, while Southwest Marine (owned by the Washington, D.C.-based The Carlyle Group) has been awarded over $200 million in Navy contracts over the past two years.
Coastkeeper is also working with the San Diego Unified Port District to undo the damage done by previously imposed AET sediment levels at the Campbell site. After taking over the site and conducting its own assessment, the Port determined the volume of toxic contaminants - initially estimated at 20,000 cubic yards - may be as high as 120,000 cubic yards, stalling remediation efforts. The Port has agreed to work cooperatively with Coastkeeper and the local environmental community to determine effective remediation levels and strategies for the site.
Coastkeeper continues to challenge local and state regulators and elected officials to demand that shipyards undertake comprehensive sediment cleanup levels to remove all the contamination they have caused over the past four decades are restore the health of this fragile ecosystem. Litigation options will be reviewed if agencies fail to do their jobs to regulate companies that have long profited from operations that wash toxic chemicals into our bay without having to pay for the damage done to our public resource.