Near the old military housing area lies a huge remnant of wartime activities—a zone of abandoned, one-level cement buildings that held the weapons of vessels brought in to be cleaned or repaired in the days when Mare Island was known as the Mare Island Naval Shipyard.

The “island” is actually a 5,000-acre peninsula, about one mile wide and 3.5 miles long, jutting into San Pablo Bay 30 miles northeast of San Francisco, within the city limits of Vallejo. On it are three giant drydocks, an 18-hole golf course, more than five million square feet of industrial building space, 13 colonial-style mansions dating back to the early 1900s, a chapel with 16 original Tiffany windows, a medical school with more than 440 students, an old hazardous waste dump, and more than 3,700 acres of wetlands.

Across the Mare Island Strait, some 1,500 feet away, is downtown Vallejo, with its minimal foot traffic, dilapidated storefronts, and endless CLEARANCE SALE banners. Yet Vallejo’s similar-sized neighbors to the west and south have thriving downtowns. And San Francisco, where real estate prices have soared to unprecedented levels, is only 55 minutes away by ferry and 45 to 60 minutes away by car, depending on traffic.

Mare Island is within Vallejo and city officials have drafted a mammoth downtown revitalization plan that will rely on its transformation into a major residential, commercial, and industrial center. But before that vision can be realized, toxic residues accumulated in the environment during 142 years of military use must be removed. And that’s a giant task. Reuse plans at many other bases have languished pending cleanup.

Until two years ago, decommissioned military base properties could be relinquished only after they received a clean bill of health from the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or its state counterpart and the regional water quality control board. In 1998, to speed up reuse, Congress passed legislation providing for “early transfer,” with responsibility for cleanup going to private developers. So far, this procedure remains virtually untested on such a grand scale.

The Navy, the City, the State, developers, and a passel of regulatory agencies have been working together for over a year, trying to effect a complex real estate transaction that would allow the Navy, through the City, to transfer ownership of roughly 80 percent of the developable part of the military base—some 1,500 acres—to two developers before it is clean. The task of completing the cleanup would be carried out by these developers, whom the City of Vallejo has already selected, under regulatory agency supervision.

What’s at Risk?

The mess is huge: leaking underground gas storage tanks, volatile organic compounds, asbestos, lead-based paint, fuel, PCBs, maybe radioactive materials and unexploded ordnance, and more. Although the Navy has been studying the island’s contamination since 1982 and working to remove it, its full extent is still unknown.

“I guess you could say the disposal practices (on Mare Island) didn’t always envision future land use that might include something besides military use,” said Dan Murphy, who heads a team of engineers and geologists that oversees base closures for the Navy. “The investigations are ongoing in terms of what’s out there and how to go about cleaning it up.”

In light of such uncertainties, “early transfer” (or “dirty transfer,” as some call it) could be fraught with perils. Could the City, future property owners, or the general public be facing some unwelcome surprises later?

The negotiations now under way are meant to eliminate that risk if they succeed—and if all involved subsequently honor their commitments to each other. By late November, it had been agreed that the developers will clean up already identified pollution, with the Navy funding the work up to an agreed-upon cost ceiling. Should the cost exceed the agreed-upon amount, the developers will be responsible. The Navy retains responsibility for toxics that might be discovered later, as well as for any radioactive hazards and unexploded ordnance.

Unlike some other bases, Mare Island is not a federally designated “Superfund” clean-up site, so the U.S. EPA is only minimally involved. The California EPA is the lead agency, thus Governor Davis needs to give overall approval. The parties involved — the Navy, the City, the state Department of Toxic Substances Control (a division of the California EPA), developers, and the San Francisco Regional Water Quality Control Board—hope to have two packages of agreements (one for each developer) on the Governor’s desk by late spring 2001.

“This is all new stuff. It is certainly going to set a lot of precedents,” said Dennis Kelly, a mechanical engineer for Dynamac Corporation Environmental Services, and a consultant to the Navy on the early transfer process. “And the experience of the developers at Mare Island will probably dictate how these proceed in the future.”

From Sailing Ships to Nuclear Subs

Mare Island has been a Navy base since 1854—four years before California became a state—when the Navy purchased it. In time, Mare Island Naval Shipyard grew to be the largest naval ship construction and repair facility in the world.

From the Civil War through the Korean and Vietnam Wars, Mare Island was the Navy’s flagship Pacific Coast operation. During World War II, 45,000 people worked there and hundreds of vessels were serviced. From 1957 to April 1996, Mare Island specialized in the construction and repair of nuclear submarines.

“They built every type of ship at Mare Island, from sailing to steam to gas turbine to nuclear,” said Gill Hollingsworth, Mare Island Project manager for the City of Vallejo. “Nearly the entire history of the U.S. Navy has passed through there at one time or another.”

In 1993 Mare Island Naval Shipyard was designated for closing, along with 178 other Navy facilities in the country, including 14 other Navy bases in California. This was a heavy blow to the local community. Some 10,000 jobs would vanish, local businesses and property values would suffer. A reuse commission was established, bringing together people from Vallejo and nearby communities in an effort to plan ahead, agree on reuse choices, and try to avert the conflicts and delays that had followed many other base closures. People in Vallejo were well aware that Hamilton Field in Marin County and Hunters Point in San Francisco still aren’t clean decades after closing. If that happened at Mare Island, the results would be disastrous for the local economy. Mare Island’s rich cultural, historical, and natural assets cannot be tapped until the hazardous waste is gone.

Before officially departing in 1996, the Navy spent $120 million surveying for hazardous materials. “Contaminants here included radioactive materials, unexploded ordnance, PCBs, heavy metals, and petroleum products. It’s a big base with very complex environmental issues compared to the other ones,” said Murphy. Mare Island was the oldest and largest shipyard west of the Mississippi.

Speeding Up the Process

In 1998, Congress amended the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) to speed up conversion of military bases to new uses by allowing transfer before cleanup is complete.

“It was taking years for communities to get in there and develop the property, so I think in many cases (the delays) turned off proposals,” said Bill Neville, the Navy’s base closure manager for early transfers. “The idea was to facilitate the reuse of the property.”

The City of Vallejo asked the Navy for early transfer, reasoning that if developers were placed in charge of the cleanup, the job would be finished more quickly and at lower cost. Cumbersome bureaucratic procedures would be avoided and the required work could be molded around the development schedule. “Any time you bring a federal agency in you have a significant amount of management overhead that you don’t have with a private company,” Hollingsworth explained.

On paper, the Navy deals only with the City, not with the developers. The City in turn has a contract with the developers, and the developers contract with the cleanup firms. However, the specifics of the City’s contracts with the developers, which must be worked out beforehand, will be contained in the City’s contracts with the Navy. If all agree on the transfer process, with all the details involved, and the Governor approves, about 80 percent of Mare Island will be signed over to the City. The City will transfer almost all of that land to the two developers it has selected. The developers will hire environmental cleanup contractors to do the dirty work on a schedule that allows construction to start as soon as possible.

Federal law (CERCLA) requires that when military land is transferred to new owners, the deeds contain assurances that (1) if unexpected contamination is later found and development restrictions are consequently required, these restrictions are passed along to the new owner; and (2) the Navy can access the property at any time for inspections or to deal with emergency environmental issues.

Eventually, the deed would also have to include an assurance that reuse of the land poses no risk to human health and the environment. The early transfer process, however, allows for postponement of that certification until cleanup is complete. Asked what would happen if toxic pollution turns up after land is sold and homes or other structures are built, Chip Gribble, project manager for the Department of Toxic Substances Control, said: “If we do our job well, the likelihood of that happening would be remote. However, the Navy remains always responsible and liable.”

The Department of Toxic Substances Control would oversee the developers, first certifying land as suitable for development, and later for habitation or other types of reuse. Areas to be used for residences have much stricter cleanup standards than land slated for industrial development.

At least two contracts will be sent to the governor. One would enable the City to transfer 700 acres to Lennar Mare Island, LLC, which intends to build 1,400 “dwellings” of various types and to lease out the industrial part of that property. This acreage includes historic “Captains’ Row,” with its spacious old houses shaded by large trees. Lennar has agreed to clean up known pollution, with up to $81.6 million from the Navy. The City will receive a percentage of the profits Lennar makes from leasing or selling its land. The size of that percentage is still being negotiated.

The second contract would allow for the transfer of 200 acres to Legacy Partners for commercial development. Legacy will pay the City at market rate. The City will be required to reinvest this income on Mare Island for streets, sewers, plazas and other common areas, and other infrastructure. Lands that are to become parks will be designated in specific development plans. The developers will rededicate these to the City after cleanup.

Both Lennar and Legacy have hired environmental cleanup firms. The contractor working for Lennar would have to clean up underground gas and oil storage tank sites, pipeline systems (storm water, sanitary, industrial waste, and water and fuel distribution), and also asbestos, lead-based paint, and PCBs.

Legacy will have to deal with possible PCB and other leaks, such as an area where chemicals used in paint manufacturing seeped into the soil, according to Jim Davies, project manager for Harding, Lawson, & Associates, Legacy’s contractor. The Navy has taken care of most of the PCB leaks and most of the paint chemical problem, he said.
At the Department of Toxic Substances Control, however, Gribble offered a more cautious assessment. “I don’t know about ‘most,’” he said. “The Navy has gone to considerable effort to reduce the contamination out there, but there’s no question more work needs to be done to remediate the problem.” He added: “We’re not at a point where we fully understand the impacts.”

Toxic cleanup is a relatively new practice, especially when the poisons are underground, in wetlands, or underwater. Surprises can be expected, and cost estimates could need drastic revision as a consequence. Despite such uncertainties, Hollingsworth said that Mare Island should be able to meet specified reuse standards in about two years, at a cost of about $100 million. (Under the Navy’s broom, City officials estimate it would take about 20 years.) Navy officials refused to estimate the timeline or cost of the cleanup.

Some of the old base, including old ammunition depots, will stay with the Navy. The 3,000-acre wetland area includes 2,200 acres of tidal and nontidal wetlands that will be transferred to the State Lands Commission (SLC), which has jurisdiction over state tidelands. Once it accepts title, the Commission would lease the wetlands to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to be incorporated into the San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge along with another 162 acres to be directly transferred to Fish and Wildlife. That agency hopes to renovate a 60-year-old building on the edge of that property as a visitor center for the Refuge.

The 3,000-acre wetland area includes 320 acres with an old hazardous waste landfill (40 acres, used between 1982 and 1986), an oil dump, a lead battery dump, a former industrial wastewater treatment plant, and a 120-acre landfill used at the turn of the 19th century. About 80 percent, including most of the historic landfill, is within filled tide and submerged lands granted by California to the Navy many years ago. At present, the State does not intend to accept title to the hazardous landfill area. The Navy has tentatively agreed to retain ownership. “We’re not an agency that deals with cleanup,” explained Dave Plummer, SLC regional manager. “We’ve made it very clear to the Navy that we have no intention of taking title to the landfill area until it has been cleaned up.”

The Navy owns an undeveloped area of roughly 200 acres at the southern end of the island. That land will be transferred to the City, which will transfer it to the State Lands Commission, which will then lease it back to the City with use restrictions to ensure it remains a natural park area.

Landfill, Dredge Ponds,
and Wildlife Refuge

Some local leaders want the Navy to retain ownership of the hazardous landfill area indefinitely. “It’s a liability for ever and ever and ever,” said Myrna Hayes, co-chair of the Restoration Advisory Board, a group
of local residents that acts as a community watchdog for the cleanup. She and some others feel the same way about the historic landfill of some 120 acres, a part of which would be transferred to the City. “What city do you know of that is clamoring to get a landfill into their asset package, for God’s sake?” asked Hayes.

The City, however, is prepared to take ownership of its part of the historic landfill, which is mostly filled with construction debris, and to transfer it to Lennar for cleanup. The Navy, the developer, and Lennar’s cleanup firm, CH2M HILL, have agreed on this.

In 1999, disagreement over the cleanup price tag killed negotiations to transfer ownership of the Navy’s Alameda base to developers. But Ron Plaseied, the manager for that base closure, said the Mare Island negotiations are “much further along than we ever got.”

From the City’s standpoint, once all the contractual details are worked out, there should be no liability concerns for Vallejo. “That’s why we have all these lawyers and experts representing us, to make sure that all these liabilities and costs are covered,” said Hollingsworth.

The developers also said they are not concerned about the liability involved with taking ownership of the land. “We’ve done a lot of due diligence on what is there to clean up and what it might cost to do it,” said William Moore, project director for Lennar.

If the agreements succeed, Vallejo will have the green light to take advantage of a rare and lucky development opportunity. The developers are courting high-tech and biotech firms. They envision a mini–Silicon Valley feeding a new and vibrant downtown Vallejo, and restoring in a different form the 10,000 jobs lost when the Navy pulled out in 1996. Mare Island’s historic waterfront area, with its colonial mansions and chapel, will play host to a diverse mix of shops, restaurants, and entertainment venues while preserving the island’s almost legendary character forged by more than 145 years of naval history. The signing of a cooperative agreement with the first developer, Lennar, was a promising first step.

Mare Island could become a model for other bases in the country that are now on the brink of the early transfer process. If so, it will come with a warning label: “Use with great care.”

Marc Simborg is a freelance writer and former environmental reporter for the Fairfield Daily Republic.