Clean-up of radioactive waste from the former Naval Air Station-Alameda will enter a more intensive phase in coming weeks as workers under the auspices of the U.S. Navy begin excavating and removing soil and storm drains contaminated by decades of sloppy disposal of cadmium, radium-226, PCBs and other toxic compounds. Work is expected to commence in mid June.

The bulk of the contamination occurred from the 1940s until the 1970s. Some of the waste originated in the base's paint shops where glow-in-the-dark radium was painted on airplane instruments. Workers at the shop washed debris down ordinary sinks. The sinks emptied into storm drains, which dumped into Seaplane Lagoon near where the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Hornet is currently moored. The area is still used by recreational fishermen, despite some signs obliquely warning of danger. Radium-226 has a half-life of 1,602 years.

In all, Navy officials expect to remove 5,000 feet worth of storm drains and whatever contaminated debris is inside them and ship it to a long-term low-level radioactive waste dump in Idaho. Officials expect to remove 27,000 cubic yards of debris. Once that work is complete, the Navy plans to dredge 15 feet down within 100 feet of the storm drain outflow pipes and remove another 63,000 cubic yards of radioactive sludge from the lagoon and ship that to Idaho as well.

Work has fallen behind schedule. According to a fall 2007 newsletter from the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC), the work was to begin last September and to have been completed in April.

On a tour of the area Saturday, members of Alameda's Remediation Advisory Board (RAB) were offered an arms-length visit to some parts of the site by Navy and BRAC officials. With the skyscrapers of San Francisco's Financial District looming on the horizon, about 25 people crept through the now-weed-choked airfields aboard a school bus. In the distance, abandoned ammunition bunkers ringed the cracked pavement. A few tense moments erupted when Patrick Brooks, BRAC's environmental coordinator, refused to let members off the bus, citing safety concerns despite trip invitations urging visitors to wear comfortable closed-toed shoes to tour two dumps, the lagoon and the least tern colony on foot.

"I don't budge on safety," he said, ignoring committee members who said that such access was routine on similar tours two years ago.

Visitors also offered to sign waivers, to no avail. "We've gone inside the buildings and we had open access to just about everything, but not since this guy took over," said Doug Biggs of the Alameda Point Collaborative. Brooks said no one could leave the bus without hardhats, steel-toed boots, reflective vests and goggles, even to walk along the tarmac.

Brooks later pointed to a site out of view requiring special training and a post-visit screening to assure radiation isn't tracked out on shoes or tire tracks. Councilman Doug deHaan, a former worker at the base who was aboard the bus, said the site that concerned Brooks so much was once a picnic area.

"I'm very disappointed. I thought they'd at least let us have access to things," said Jean Sweeney, a member of the RAB.

George Humphreys, another RAB member, said the group has urged Navy officials to better contain the two Navy dumpsites. Humphreys said that two years ago the Navy planned to cap the toxic site with two feet of soil. The amount was recently increased to three feet. Humphreys said he and others might have helped convince the Navy to add plastic sheeting below the contaminated soil to prevent burrowing animals like squirrels from reaching the waste.

"I still don't think that is completely adequate without a lateral slurry wall ... I'm not satisfied that they can design the thing to withstand an earthquake," Humphreys said, citing likely liquefaction and so-called sand boils, where loose soil can shoot up in spouts during a quake.

"Later on, if, say, it gets turned into a golf course, [and a major quake happens] the city would be responsible for cleaning it up."

Marc Albert can be reached at