SAN FRANCISCO - Resident voiced his concerns over dust

Keith Tisdell spent much of last year complaining that the city and the Lennar Corp. were not protecting residents from construction dust that billowed out of the Hunters Point Shipyard construction site.

He said the dust would take flight in the strong hilltop wind and cover the neighborhood's cars, driveways and doorsteps.

"They (Lennar) would be grading and breaking up rock and not putting any water on it," said Tisdell, a Hunters Point resident. "We'd complain and the job would shut down for a day and then, they'd start doing it again ... same thing."

Tisdell is one of a handful of residents interviewed by The Chronicle on Monday who said that up until about November, they regularly saw large clouds of dust coming from a shipyard parcel that the city had given to Lennar, so the homebuilder could create new housing, 30 percent of which would be sold at below market-rate.

The dust has become the subject of a lawsuit filed by two Lennar executives. In the suit filed Friday in San Francisco Superior Court, Gary McIntyre, Lennar's project manager, and Clementine Clarke, the company's community liaison claimed that Lennar violated state law by retaliating against them for raising questions about the dust problems at the construction site. McIntyre and Clarke also claimed that they were victims of racial discrimination in the workplace. They are seeking unspecified financial damages.

Lennar spokesman Sam Singer has said the allegations in the lawsuit are untrue and that the company has gone to great lengths to protect public health.

Amy Brownell, an environmental engineer with the city health department, said Monday that she repeatedly warned Lennar about its failure to control the construction dust and cited the company three times in 2006, the last time on Nov. 30.

But, Brownell said Lennar continually improved in its dust monitoring and control and she argues that the violations issued against the company show that the city's regulatory system works.

She also said that aside from the immediate health affects of the construction dust, including watery eyes, sneezing and possible asthma, there are no long-term health problems associated with the levels and types of dust at the shipyard.

Tisdell and other neighbors are concerned that the dust may be far more harmful. They point to the fact that naturally occurring asbestos is present in the bedrock at the site and was no doubt disturbed during the chipping and grading of the earth.

Inhaling dust-borne asbestos is known to cause lung cancer and other medical problems.

According to the lawsuit, Paul Menaker, a Lennar vice president, who was named as a defendant, told McIntyre and Clarke that asbestos monitoring equipment at the project site had been malfunctioning for months.

Tisdell said that he lived adjacent to the shipyard from 1999 until recently. For the past year he has worked at the shipyard, where he is employed by the company Tetra Tech, which monitors trucks transporting low-level toxic dirt from the former Navy base to landfill site.

Tisdell said he peered directly into the parcel of earth that Lennar was grading and shifting to build 1,600 new condominiums and townhouses and would see large plumes of dust and little water to control it. He said he called Lennar and the city incessantly to complain.

The navy transferred the parcel to the city in 2005, as part of a plan to redevelop the entire 500-acre area that was once used for repairing and cleaning ships that were sometimes contaminated with radiological waste.

In addition to the new housing already planned for the area, Mayor Gavin Newsom and Lennar have invited the 49ers to build a new football stadium at the shipyard. In February, Newsom's office requested that the Navy transfer the cleanup of the entire shipyard to Lennar.

The shipyard is on prime real estate, but is listed as a Superfund site because of toxic pollution resulting from shipyard operations.

Residents in the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood suffer from higher rates of asthma and other illnesses than residents anywhere else in San Francisco, according to a report of the city's public health department.

Many have been on edge about the construction dust at the shipyard development, which was supposed to serve as an economic engine to resuscitate the economically depressed area.

"Until about four months ago, you would stand on the hill next to the shipyard and see a huge cloud of dust, and you'd say 'come on, you've got to be kidding me,' " said Melita Rines who chairs the India Basin Neighborhood Association, and has served on an advisory board created by the Navy.

Rines, who has lived less than 100 yards from the shipyard for 10 years, said that after she and her neighbors complained to Brownell and Lennar and the Navy, work would stop and the dust would subside, but then it would start up all over again.

She wonders how the city can claim that the dust will not cause long-term health affects.

"They say the dust is not toxic, but in 10 to 15 years, who knows; and who are we going to talk to about it?" Rines asked.