A former chemical plant dumped thousands of tons of industrial waste around the San Francisco Bay Area. The deposits were made in places that are now open to the public — and could contain radioactive material.
Beyond a chain-link fence topped with spiraled barbed wire, swaying coastal grasses conceal a cache of buried radioactive waste and toxic pesticides from a bygone chemical plant. Warning signs along the Richmond, Calif., site's perimeter attempt to discourage trespassers from breaching the locked gates, where soil testing has detected cancer-causing gamma radiation more than 60 times higher than background levels in some places. For most of the 20th century, the former Stauffer Chemical Co.
and the water board — two sister agencies under the umbrella of the California EPA — whose cooperation is vital to protect public health and the environment. “The fact that officials reached out to 11 government agencies to discuss the possible cleanup of the Blair Southern Pacific Landfill, a six-acre gated landfill in Richmond that had accepted Stauffer's waste. That's when the
. Just outside the fence line, John Knox, 73, has been living in his van parked at the base of the dead-end street, where signs posted by the
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