Health Risks Associated with Early Transfer of Contaminated Properties — Port of Oakland Case Study. M. J. O’Brien, A. A. Keller, L. Everret, D. H. Bennett, and W. E. Kastenberg; University of California at Santa Barbara, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and University of California
As military bases close around the country, many former Federal Government sites will be available for transfer to local users. In an attempt to expedite transfer, early transfer legislation has been established but many Local Reuse Authorities (LRA) remain reluctant to assume the legal responsibility of environmental contamination. We outline a strategy that allows LRAs to mitigate financial, environmental and human health risks to undertake an early transfer of contaminated Federal property. The LRAs can hopefully transfer these sites with a privatized cleanup more quickly, less expensively, and with reduced health and ecological risk than the Federal Government. The Port of Oakland’s case is presented as the first successful Finding of Suitability for Early Transfer with Insurance and Financial analysis (FOSETIF), which uses an innovative approach to risk management that results in accelerated transfer. We determine the level of human health risk for construction and future occupational workers based upon four different transfer scenarios. With no transfer, the property sits idle with no remediation. With an extended transfer, the military would cleanup to residential standards. With a FOSETIF Transfer, the LRA would cleanup to appropriate risk based reuse standards while a FOSETIF (IC) Transfer includes institutional controls. The chemicals examined for these different transfer scenarios include benzene, toluene, arsenic and lead. This study found that early-privatized transfer reduces human health risk, while a no transfer poses the greatest human health risks.
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