Treasure Island Visit: First Impressions

Recently Solar Times editor Sandy LeonVest and I paid a visit to radioactive Treasure Island. It was the first visit for her and only the second for me.

My first visit was an ominous one, as it turned out to be the day the Symbionese Liberation Army died in a hail of incendiary grenades, which the LAPD launched into the “safe” house they were holed up in.

I’ve written about Treasure Island’s radioactive contamination before (see “Hot Spots: Radioactive San Francisco,” in the January 2014 edition of San Francisco Bayview newspaper, sfbayview.org). But this was the first time since that fiery day in LA in 1974 that I’d been back.

The Treasure Island Naval Base has been closed since 1997. We now know that the US Navy has left a deadly trail of radioactive contamination across the island.
Last December The Investigative Team of the Bay Area NBC TV station ran a story about this radioactive contamination. It reported that some TI residents were being evicted because of contamination around their homes.
The contamination supposedly was arsenic, not radioactivity. The report listed addresses of some of the sites where these evictions were going to take place.
And it also reported that all the sites, comprising 40 units, were located on or next to “recently identified radiologically impacted sites.”

Bay Area NBC also reported that the evictions would begin in April.

So on our visit, we first went to one of the addresses NBC had listed: 1133 Mason Court. That turned out to be a circle of two-story attached apartments. There were multiple addresses, and each address had multiple units.

We observed that units 1133-F and G appeared to be vacant, as well as units 1135-B and C and 1131-F. We talked to several residents, who didn’t admit to knowing if anyone had moved out recently.

One resident, however, who said he had lived there 11 years, was kind enough to invite us in to see his apartment. It was a fairly spacious utilitarian place, and he showed us his grassy back yard as well.

Behind these residences, to the west, was a dirt road that proceeded north along the bay, featuring sweeping views of Baghdad by the Bay.

After exploring Mason Court, we headed back out its entrance and took a right onto Gateview Avenue.

A ways down the road we observed a tall wooden fence on our right concealing whatever was behind it.

The fence was plastered with signs telling us that the concealed area contained hazardous and radioactive materials.

Further ahead, on our right, Gateview passed a metal fence. We stopped to peer through gaps in that fencing, which displayed the hazardous and radioactive signs as well.

What we saw was a large area that appeared to be a dug up pile of soil that had once been a rather substantial yard between two large, now boarded up derelict buildings. It didn’t appear that there had been activity in this area for some time.

It wasn’t pretty, to say the least.
What is was, was ominous.

Further down Gateview, we turned off to get another look at the ominous area. From this vantage point we could see the back of 1325 Gateview, another attached apartment structure, also cited on the NBC eviction list.

Across the way in the opposite direction, two men in hard hats were working in a large green yard, apparently testing something in liquid form. I strolled over to one of their adjacent vans and saw that it belonged to a company with an environmental sounding name.

I also walked up to the dirt road we’d seen running along the bay behind Mason Court. But at this point the road was blocked off, and the roadblocks bore the same hazardous and radioactive signs we’d been seeing.

The roadblocks, however, didn’t prevent us from looking down on the ominous area from yet another perspective.

When we were done with this mess, we moved on in search of the former Treasure Island Boys and Girls Club. In several other reports, I’d read that the facility had been closed down some years back, coinciding with increasing reports of radioactive materials being found on the island.

I’d simply looked in a phone book (remember them?) to ascertain the facility’s address at 401 Avenue E. We found the avenue, and passed by one large abandoned building after another on our way.

Then we came to another roadblock. Below were several large water filled sinkholes, the remnants of what had previously been Avenue E.

We took a circular route that brought us to the other side of Avenue E. There we found the former Treasure Island Boys and Girls Club, where children had run and played once upon a time, sitting there going derelict, like so much else on the island.

In certain ways Treasure Island reminded me of the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina. Both are pretty much flat, nearly all ruined and neglected.

But whereas it can be argued that the L9 was destroyed by a natural disaster, there is nothing natural about the destruction on Treasure Island. Nothing at all.

Several days after our visit, I learned that on the day before we were there, March 24, the Navy had announced that ii was going to start testing all its residential units on Treasure Island for the presence of radiation.

And what would become of the people who are living in such apartments?
That is just one of the many unanswered questions blowing in the wind around Treasure Island.