Major environmental clean-up operations in San Francisco Bay

The public utility company in northern California, Pacific Gas & Electric Company, continues major environmental cleanup operations in San Francisco Bay, while a floating excavator works daily near Pier 39 of the bay.

The goal of the project is to remove the remaining contaminated clay from a factory that stopped working a long time ago, which manufactured a type of gas used to light lamps in salons of the last century.

The cleanup is expected to continue until 2030, and will eventually treat approximately 40,000 square meters of the Gulf’s bottom.

The cleanup is taking place in one of the most popular areas of San Francisco, and is the latest in a series of remediation projects launched by the public utility company, to clean up several old gas plants in the Marina and Fisherman’s Wharf.

Nearly 15 years ago, the company began buying property in Marina to clean up backyards contaminated by old gas plants, and in 2022 a federal judge ruled that a public utility company in Northern California could assume responsibility for cleaning up the remains of another gas plant near Ghirardelli Square.

Executive Director of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, Ellen White, said: “The work taking place from (Pier 39) to (Pier 43) is among the most important bay cleanup projects in recent decades, which includes a more complex cleanup process being carried out by the federal government of the former naval shipyard site at Hunters Point, a site where workers recently discovered a radioactive heavy metal.”

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