[CPEO-BIF] Howard Terminal, Oakland, California

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Underneath the asphalt
Howard Terminal’s industrial past poses challenges for Oakland A’s planned stadium

By Kimberly Veklerov 
San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
February 15, 2019

The Oakland A’s planned site for a new stadium is now mostly a parking lot, where colorful shipping containers and tractor-trailers sit in neat rows and diesel fumes and seagulls pack the gusty air.
But underneath the asphalt of Howard Terminal, on the Oakland Inner Harbor, lies a buried legacy of industrial use going back a century. A Chronicle review of regulatory documents found that soil and groundwater on the site contain hazardous and cancer-causing chemicals that would need to be remedied before a ballpark could be built there.

The presence of the toxic material will probably be addressed in the environmental review process that will begin in the coming months. Depending on the concentration and position of the harmful substances, the dirt may have to be removed entirely, altered chemically or further sealed off from human contact, experts say. State regulators will have to sign off on the plans.

Now a 50-acre site for container storage and truck parking, the Charles P. Howard Terminal near Jack London Square was previously home to oil tanks, a manufactured gas plant, a briquette plant where compressed charcoal blocks were made, a coal tramway, an asphalt paving plant and a blacksmith.

…

For the entire article, see
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Howard-Terminal-s-industrial-past-poses-13618156.php

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Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650/961-8918 
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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