Why is This Important?
A contaminated site is property with ground or water pollution that jeopardizes public and environmental health. Contaminated sites can adversely impact a community's economic vitality because current use and future development of the sites is limited, while site cleanup is often costly and time consuming. The
concentration of contaminated sites in low income communities is of particular concern as those communities are typically less able to address the additional economic and environmental burden.
What is a Sustainable State?
A sustainable state is one where the number of contaminated sites decreases over time and new cases of contamination are identified and remediated promptly.
How Are We Doing?
The California State Water Resources Control Board maintains a database of contaminated sites monitored by local and regional water boards. For San Mateo County, the local authority is the San Francisco Regional Water Quality Control Board which manages several soil and groundwater protection programs that
have contributed to a dramatic decrease in contaminated sites in San Mateo County over the past 10 years.
• At year end 2009, 435 contaminated sites in San Mateo County were undergoing investigation, monitoring, and cleanup, a decline of 46 percent over the last 10 years. All cities in the county have fewer contaminated sites today than they did 10 years ago.
• The contaminated sites include 252 with a history of leaking underground storage tanks and the remaining 182 have other pollutants (e.g., solvents, petroleum, and heavy metals). There is also one military cleanup site.
• There are no longer any Superfund cleanup sites in San Mateo County.
• The prevalence of contaminated sites (many of which are former underground storage tanks at gas stations) is highly correlated with industrial activity and population. As a result, Redwood City, South San Francisco, and the City of San Mateo have the highest number of contaminated sites.
• The number of contaminated sites is declining among most cities in the county. In South San Francisco, the number of sites has declined 57 percent since 1999; in the City of San Mateo, the number of contaminated sites has decreased 44 percent in the same time period.
