The Navy announced Tuesday that metals and petroleum have been found in the ground and benzene in the air around a landfill in San Francisco which has been burning underground for four weeks.
It was not immediately known whether those materials found at Hunter's Point Shipyard were present at levels harmful to the public and the Navy continued to evaluate the results.
Navy officials also announced they had hired a landfill expert in hopes of finding a way to put out the smoldering fire that has troubled residents in the Hunter's Point area of the city and frustrated the Environmental Protection Agency which maintains that the military waited too long, more than three weeks, to tell anyone about the problem.
The EPA admonished the naval officials in a letter Monday for failing to alert the agency, local officials and neighbors of the site about the fire and the possible hazardous situations it may have created.
The fire has burned since Aug. 16 in an area the city hopes to build new homes and businesses after the site is cleansed of toxic wastes. Heavy metals, petroleum hydrocarbons and other industrial wastes are imbedded over the 46-acre landfill.
Officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency were scheduled to discuss the results of the first round of air samples Wednesday morning at a press conference.
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