Tetra Tech, an engineering firm that in 2018 admitted in court that it falsified soil samples at the contaminated Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, was today ordered by U.S. District Court Judge James Donato to pay $57 million in a settlement agreement.
Nearly $12 million of the payment will be awarded to seven former Tetra Tech workers who filed a whistleblower complaint alleging they were instructed by the company to replace potentially contaminated samples with “clean” soil. Those samples were subsequently submitted to the Navy, which had hired the company to help remediate the site.
The 2013 discovery that Tetra Tech falsified soil samples delayed a decades-long effort to clean the former shipyard of contaminated waste. In 1989, the shipyard was declared a Superfund site for its high levels of toxic waste, which were remnants of its past use during the Cold War for radiological experimentation.
Following the shipyard’s designation as a Superfund site, the Navy’s cleanup was put under Environmental Protection Agency and state oversight, with the property set to be handed over to the city in phases for future development. The first and least contaminated parcel went to the city in 2004 and then to developer Lennar.
But the allegations that large swaths of the site were still contaminated forced the Navy to re-test much of the shipyard.
Two former Tetra Tech workers, Stephen Rolfe and Justin Hubbard, who were supervisors at the site, were each sentenced to eight months in federal prison in 2018.
The Navy has since found radioactive materials at the shipyard, including as recently as this spring. It may be another decade until the cleanup is complete.
“Over the past two decades, the federal government has dedicated significant resources to ensuring that the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard is free from harmful radiation and safe for public use,” said U.S. Attorney Craig Missakian in a statement. “It should have been just as important to the contractor that the government selected and paid to perform radiological testing and remediation at the site.”
Several lawsuits have been filed against Tetra Tech, including by Bayview-Hunters Point residents who fear their health has been damaged by contaminated soil, and by others who say their home values have plummeted since news of Tetra Tech’s falsifications emerged.
Last year, the company agreed to pay $40 million to the U.S. government for violating the Superfund Act, which requires that hazardous waste sites be remediated.
“By falsifying work claims and manipulating critical data, Tetra Tech put its own financial interests ahead of its commitments to the Department of the Navy,” said Acting Special Agent in Charge Brian Merkal of the NCIS Economic Crimes Field Office. “Potentially placing the health and safety of the American people at risk.”
