On MLK Day In SF Press Conference To Demand that Gov Newsom Fire Criminal Tetra Tech

On MLK Day In SF Rally/Press Conference To Demand that Gov Newsom Fire Criminally Corrupt Clean-up Company Tetra Tech

MEDIA ADVISORY

OUTRAGED HUNTERS POINT RESIDENTS DEMAND
GAVIN NEWSOM FIRE TETRA TECH

Environmentalists Join Hunters Point Residents’ Demand That Newsom Rescind State Contract with Tetra Tech to Clean Up Butte County Camp Fire Debris

WHEN: Monday, January 21, 2019, MLK Day, 3:00 pm.

WHERE: California State Building, 350 McAllister Street, San Francisco, CA


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 19, 2019 Contact: Charles Bonner, Esq.
415-331-3070; 415-601-0268 (cell)
Charles [at] bonnerlaw.com

WHAT: Press Conference. Hunters Point residents demand Governor Gavin Newsom rescind recent contract made with the scandalized company TETRA TECH by the State Environmental Protection Agency’s (Cal-EPA’s) Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle), the largest such contract in California’s history.

WHEN: Monday, January 21, 2019, MLK Day, 3:00 pm.

WHERE: California State Building, 350 McAllister Street, San Francisco, CA

WHO: Residents will be joined at the press conference by community leader Christopher Muhammad of the Nation of Islam, former Black Panther leader Elaine Brown and Attorney Charles Bonner, who represents over 3,000 Hunters Point Plaintiffs in their $27 Billion lawsuit filed against Tetra Tech last year for its fraudulent reports that it had cleaned up a portion of the Shipyard. The residents’ demand is supported by renowned environmental and medical leaders, including Dr. Ahimsa Sumchai, Environmental Scientist Wilma Subra, Dr. Rupa Marya, Epidemiologist Mark Alexander, Green Action leaders Bradley Angel and Marie Harrison, Dr. Ray Tompkins.

Newsom, who had barely been sworn in as Governor when he appointed Jared Blumenfeld to head the Cal-EPA Agency, was a pivotal player in the deal the City of San Francisco made when he was Mayor with mega-housing developer Lennar to construct more than 10,000 housing units on the Shipyard. The Navy then engaged Tetra Tech to clean up the Superfund site for the Lennar development. Late last year, the Shipyard’s first homeowners sued Lennar, and now the Navy itself and the Department of Justice have sued Tetra Tech for its dangerously fraudulent practices. More, Congressional House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently echoed residents’ outrage, stating, “We are concerned that Tetra Tech continues to receive contracts amidst ongoing Department of Justice whistleblower lawsuits into their fraudulent work at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.” The Cal-EPA/CalRecycle contract with Tetra Tech was flagrantly entered into even as the U.S. Department of Justice filed its lawsuit against Tetra Tech. To add insult to injury, CalRecycle, headed by Scott Smithline, recently issued a statement arrogantly defending its choice of Tetra Tech. This contract is an insult to residents who remain fearful for their very lives over the radiated Shipyard given the unusually high incidences of cancer, cancer deaths, respiratory diseases, and other medical conditions among Hunters Point residents that scientists and doctors have indicated are caused by the Shipyard’s radiation and other toxic releases. Hunters Point residents send out a warning to Butte County fire victims to beware of Tetra Tech’s practices.

Corrupt CA Gov Newsom Who Covered Up $1 Billion Eco Fraud Scandal At Hunters Point Shipyard Gives Criminal Tetra Tech Another Huge State Contract To Clean-up Camp Fire After Committing Fraud At Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Clean-up

Suspect shipyard contractor gets huge state deal for Camp Fire cleanup

https://www.sfchronicle.com/green/article/Suspect-shipyard-contractor-gets-huge-state-13521866.php
Jason Fagone , Cynthia Dizikes and Kurtis Alexander Jan. 9, 2019 Updated: Jan. 9, 2019 7:36 p.m.

hannon Flanagan checks the ruins of the restaurant she and her husband owned that burned in the Camp Fire.Photo: Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle 2018

The flattened homes at Mountain Meadow Court at Country Oak Drive, Thursday, Nov. 15, 2018, in Paradise, Calif. As of this morning, the Camp Fire has burned 140,000 acres. The wildfire is 40% contained. 56 people have died.Photo: Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle

The state agency in charge of wildfire cleanup has awarded a contract worth as much as $250 million to the company at the center of San Francisco’s Superfund scandal — an environmental engineering firm that was caught falsifying soil tests and is being sued by the U.S. Justice Department, whistle-blowers and homeowners.

Pasadena-based Tetra Tech Inc. will lead the “debris management” process after Butte County’s devastating Camp Fire, sparking concerns from environmental groups and the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that a company accused of widespread misconduct in San Francisco will have such a large role in the state’s wildfire recovery.

Two former Tetra Tech cleanup supervisors were sentenced to prison last year after admitting they faked soil tests at the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, a 500-acre site tainted with radioactivity. After checking the company’s data, the Navy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have said they can’t trust most of it. Now many areas need to be retested and residents living on a purportedly clean part of the shipyard doubt their safety. The Navy has said the fraud and the retesting may cost taxpayers more than $500 million.
Trump: I’ll cut off fire relief to California unless ‘they...
“We are concerned that Tetra Tech continues to receive contracts amidst ongoing Department of Justice whistle-blower lawsuits into their fraudulent work at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard,” said Taylor Griffin, a spokeswoman for Pelosi, who said last year that Tetra Tech should not receive any new federal contracts. “Wildfire victims of California must have confidence that recovery efforts are accurate, trustworthy and safe.”

The contract, valued at $250 million, represents the biggest-ever single award for wildfire cleanup by CalRecycle, and an amount larger than any of Tetra Tech’s current federal contracts. The Camp Fire, which began Nov. 8, destroyed nearly 14,000 homes, essentially wiping out the foothill town of Paradise on its way to becoming the most destructive wildfire in California history.

The huge award is just one of several recently handed to the company by CalRecycle, which has been tasked by the governor’s office to deal with the removal of debris and hazardous waste left in the wreckage of last year’s deadly wildfires. In addition to working on the Camp Fire cleanup, Tetra Tech has deployed crews to the regions scarred by the Carr Fire in Shasta County (a $14.4 million contract) and the Mendocino Complex Fire ($1.5 million). Tetra Tech also consults for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has handled other wildfire cleanup duties in California.

Bradley Angel, the executive director of Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, a local environmental watchdog group that has asked the federal government and the state to revoke Tetra Tech’s nuclear materials license, called the continued flow of public money to the company “mind-boggling.”

“Tetra Tech should not be getting a penny of government funds, or taxpayer dollars, to work on issues that they have shown they cannot be trusted on,” Angel said. “It is improper and raises serious questions about who our government is protecting.”

Sam Singer, a Tetra Tech spokesman, said that the company “does not discuss details about its contracts and awards for which it competes.” Tetra Tech has previously said it did nothing wrong at the shipyard and has blamed problems on a few “rogue” employees.

CalRecycle said in a statement: “In previous wildfire debris removal operations, Tetra Tech has proven to be a reliable debris management contractor, meeting CalRecycle’s high standards for health and safety, performance, and operational accountability.”

Governments regularly hire private companies to help clean up after natural disasters. Responding to last year’s wildfires, the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services gave CalRecycle the responsibility to deal with debris and hazardous waste. CalRecycle selected Tetra Tech to handle one phase of the Camp Fire job after a public bidding process. Tetra Tech employees mobilized in the field and began work on Monday; the job is expected to last one year.

The Governor’s Office of Emergency Services did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Cleaning up the Camp Fire, which burned 240 square miles of Butte County, will entail clearing out an estimated 8 million tons of debris — about four times what was removed from the 2017 Northern California fires — and a witches’ brew of potentially hazardous household materials, from pesticides to plastics to paint.

“The fear is that these chemicals turn into something when they burn that is as toxic or more toxic than their parent materials,” said Tom Young, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis, who is studying the health problems that may be posed by the remnants of the 2017 Wine Country fires. “People are worried about growing a garden after a fire, and they’re worried because their kids are exposed.”

As wildfires become more frequent and more destructive, as is expected with a warming climate, disaster cleanup has become a bigger business. The cost of clearing Camp Fire debris alone is expected to top $3 billion.

The recent state contracts obtained by Tetra Tech give the company broad powers and responsibilities that will affect communities for years to come.

The company’s role is essentially to quarterback the cleanup process in each wildfire location. The first phase is handled by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), which go in after the fires and remove the most obvious hazards. Tetra Tech picks up from there. The company collects soil samples, manages the data, monitors the air for toxic chemicals and searches for any remaining hazardous substances, including radioactive materials and asbestos.

Tetra Tech also sets the ground rules for how contamination should be removed and when the site can be declared clean; the actual waste disposal is handled later by other companies.

Tetra Tech long served in a similar position at San Francisco’s former shipyard, gathering data about the site that was used to make disposal decisions and leaving the disposal to others.

Nationwide, Tetra Tech has been involved in a wide variety of post-disaster projects, contracting with governments to clean up after ice storms, hurricanes, tornadoes and floods. According to a 2017 company document, Tetra Tech has helped 300 state and local government clients deal with “over 50 declared presidential disasters, representing the recovery of more than $4 billion in disaster grant funds.”

In California, working for CalRecycle, Tetra Tech deployed in the aftermath of 2017’s Thomas Fire in Ventura County, and before that performed cleanup tasks on the Erskine, Clayton, Detwiler and Helena fires.

Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, said the role of the private sector in disaster-recovery work will only grow. And so will the possibility for problems.

“What I’m worried about is: Is there enough oversight?” Redlener said. “My sense is that bad work and overcharging is very frequently a problem and the government does not know how or doesn’t have the wherewithal to do the oversight. In almost every large disaster where things have to be rebuilt, there’s always stories of people getting horrible work. Everyone’s in a rush. There’s so much to be done. People want their houses back. They want their lives in order.”

Jason Fagone, Cynthia Dizikes and Kurtis Alexander are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: jason.fagone [at] sfchronicle.com, cdizikes [at] sfchronicle.com, kalexander [at] sfchronicle.com Twitter:@jfagone,



US sues Tetra Tech over SF Hunters Point shipyard work, claiming widespread fraud And Retaliation Against OSHA Whistleblowers
The new legal complaints are part of three federal suits originally filed in 2013 and 2016 by whistle-blowers who worked on the cleanup of the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. Military radiation experiments during the Cold War left the shipyard’s soil and buildings tainted with large quantities of radioactive substances. Some of these materials remain dangerous for tens of thousands of years and can cause cancer if inhaled or ingested in extraordinarily small amounts.


https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/U-S-sues-Tetra-Tech-over-Hunters-Point-shipyard-13536013.php

Jason Fagone and Cynthia Dizikes Jan. 15, 2019 Updated: Jan. 15, 2019 5:09 p.m.
Jan. 15, 2019 Updated: Jan. 15, 2019 5:09 p.m.


Top managers of the environmental engineering firm Tetra Tech directed their employees to commit widespread fraud in the cleanup of America’s largest Superfund waste site, according to new legal complaints by the U.S. Department of Justice.

The allegations were filed Monday against Tetra Tech EC, a wholly owned subsidiary of parent company Tetra Tech Inc., the $3 billion government contracting giant. The complaints contradict Tetra Tech’s repeated claims that the company has done nothing wrong and that all problems with its cleanup work at San Francisco’s mothballed naval shipyard were caused by a few rogue employees.

“Tetra Tech’s fraud was initiated and directed by Tetra Tech’s corporate managers,” the government maintains in federal court documents.

In response, company spokesman Sam Singer again said that any misconduct was isolated and that the company stands by its work.

“Tetra Tech EC will vigorously defend its record and is confident it will prevail following an impartial and transparent legal and scientific review of the facts,” Singer said in a statement.

The government is asking for almost $800 million in damages — an amount equal to about one-fourth of Tetra Tech’s revenue last year.

To date, questions about the integrity of its work at Hunters Point have apparently not affected Tetra Tech’s ability to win substantial state and federal contracts. The Chronicle revealed last week that the state of California just awarded Tetra Tech Inc. a record-breaking contract worth $250 million, for managing debris and hazardous waste left in the wreckage of the devastating Camp Fire, which burned 240 square miles of Butte County.

The new legal complaints are part of three federal suits originally filed in 2013 and 2016 by whistle-blowers who worked on the cleanup of the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. Military radiation experiments during the Cold War left the shipyard’s soil and buildings tainted with large quantities of radioactive substances. Some of these materials remain dangerous for tens of thousands of years and can cause cancer if inhaled or ingested in extraordinarily small amounts.

The Department of Justice announced its intention to join the whistle-blower lawsuits in October, a rare move signifying how seriously the government views the cases. Less than 25 percent of such claims result in such an “intervention,” according to one report.

Since at least 2003, the Navy has paid Tetra Tech more than $250 million to find and remove these radioactive materials. But the government now alleges that much of that work, from lab tests of soil samples to radiation scans of buildings, was fraudulently performed.

According to the Department of Justice, Tetra Tech fabricated radiation data and submitted more than 200 false reports that painted a bogus picture of the safety of much of the shipyard — including parcels of land directly adjacent to the developed hilltop area where 450 homes have been built and hundreds of people now live.

The company’s motive, according to the filings, was to decrease its costs and make more money.

Until now, the Department of Justice had linked just two Tetra Tech employees to the fraud, announcing last year that former Hunters Point supervisors Justin Hubbard and Stephen Rolfe had swapped dirty soil with clean soil and lied about it. The two men pleaded guilty and were sentenced to prison as part of a separate criminal case.

In his plea agreement, however, Rolfe said that he was pressured by Tetra Tech’s managers to “get clean dirt” because the company wasn’t interested in “remediating the whole goddam site.” The new filings focus attention on higher-level Tetra Tech officials, mentioning four by name.

One is Andrew Bolt, president of Tetra Tech EC since 2014 and a former senior vice president and company leader since 1994. Another is William Dougherty, the company’s top official in charge of the Hunters Point cleanup. The Chronicle revealed last year that Dougherty was instrumental in placing a large yard full of tainted soil right next door to a busy police office located inside the shipyard, potentially exposing cops and civilians to dangerous amounts of radioactive dust.

The other two Tetra Tech officials singled out in the complaints are Dennis McWade, construction manager at Hunters Point, and Rick Weingarz, who managed crews that performed radiation surveys.

Bolt did not immediately return requests for comment by email and voice mail. An email to Dougherty’s attorney went unanswered. A person who answered a cell phone number connected to McWade said, “I’m sorry, I have no comment, he’s not here,” before hanging up. Weingarz couldn’t immediately be reached.

In various public forums over the past year, Tetra Tech representatives have argued that the subsidiary handling radiological work at Hunters Point (Tetra Tech EC) and the parent company (Tetra Tech Inc.) are separate, and one is not necessarily responsible for the other.

However, in other contexts, company attorneys have said the opposite. In a 2017 filing against the federal government alleging breach of contract on a project to build facilities for the Customs and Border Protection agency in North Dakota, Tetra Tech argued that “routine business practices” of Tetra Tech Inc. and Tetra Tech EC were “taken on behalf and at the direction of the other in their roles as parent and wholly-owned subsidiary, and as business units of the same company.” The judge agreed.

Asked whether the officials identified in the new complaints are still employed by Tetra Tech, Singer declined to comment, citing a company policy against discussing current or former employees.

David Anton, the attorney for seven whistle-blower plaintiffs, called the filings “massively significant.”

“It is finally demonstrating that the Department of Justice is doing something to correct the fraud and environmental disaster at Hunters Point,” Anton said. “This fraud was committed from the top down. It is not two renegade low-level supervisors. It was operated by top management.”

Some concerns flagged by the whistle-blowers in their initial lawsuits are not being pursued by the government, including alleged misconduct by other contractors hired to clean up the shipyard as well as the former naval bases on Treasure Island and in Alameda.

Anton said the whistle-blowers still plan on pursuing these allegations and that as the lawsuits progress they “are hoping that the DOJ can realize these points and join with us.”


Jason Fagone and Cynthia Dizikes are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: jason.fagone [at] sfchronicle.com, cdizikes [at] sfchronicle.comTwitter:@jfagone, @cdizikes


WW1-1-19 Fed Gov Shutdown & Hunters Point Treasure Island Whistleblowers Face Cover-up & Corruption
https://soundcloud.com/workweek-radio/ww1-1-19-federal-gov-shutdown-and-hunters-point-treasure-island-whistleblowers
WorkWeek looks at the Federal government shutdown and how it is affecting the public including air traffic controllers. Next WorkWeek examines the escalating scandal and financial crisis at Hunters Point Shipyard and Treasure Island which has contaminated the workers and the community.
We interview David Anton who is representing 6 radiation health and safety experts who worked for the contractor Tetra Tech at Hunters Point & Treasure Island. We also interview Dr. Larry Rose who is the former medical director of Cal-OSHA and Cheryl Thornton who is an SEIU 1021 steward, delegate to the San Francisco Labor Council and works at the City Potrero Hill Health Center.
They discuss who the whistleblowers were, what happened to them and the failure to do a proper clean-up as well as the cover-up by government politicians and officials.
We also look at the failure of both the San Francisco Department of Public Health and California Department of Public Health to protect the community, workers and whistleblowers. Additionally the program discusses the failure of Cal-OSHA to protect the community and whistleblowers at both Hunters Point Shipyard and Treasure Island. There have been no investigations by Cal-OSHA over the health and safety and the retaliation against OSHA whistleblowers.
Also discussed is the role of former SF City Mayor and now California Governor Gavin Newsom, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and other political officials in this over $1 billion dollar scandal. Newsom was Mayor of San Francisco when these whistleblowers were being bullied, retaliated against and fired by Tetra Tech.
For more media:
WW1-2-19 The Fed Shutdown And Air Traffic Controllers NATCA Speaks Out
https://soundcloud.com/workweek-radio/ww1-2-19-the-fed-shutdown-and-air-traffic-controllers-natca-speaks-out
"Cleaning The Swamp" Hunters Point Tetra Tech Workers Blow Whistle On Criminal Cover-up & Corruption
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky5QFa-q1UU

WorkWeek Radio
workweek [at] kpfa.org
https://soundcloud.com/workweek-radio