An area of land, I-R site nine, on Naval Air Station North Island is so polluted it's been on the Department of Defense's list of top-five contaminated sites in the country, for several decades.
The toxic waste site is well known to the Navy, U.S EPA, and state water agencies.
About 800,000 gallons of solvents, lubricants, fuels, fire retardants, and other building materials were dumped here every year, either buried in drums or pits or simply poured onto the soil. These are concerns caused by the heavy metals, and chemicals still in the soil and groundwater, including what are called PFAS chemicals, a family of synthetic chemicals that are extremely persistent in the environment and our bodies.
“Let's work through the process together like we have, we'll create the feasibility study so we can really look at those different alternative solutions and see which one's the best from everybody's perspective, so, we do this right,” said Clemons.