"Hunters Point Shipyard Tour a Peek at $1 Billion Cleanup"

"San Francisco has big plans for Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, closed in 1974 and being cleansed of contamination by the Navy since 1991, but the city's largest piece of developable land remains a mystery to most.

About 45 curious folks got a close-up look at the deactivated shipyard Saturday on a bus tour offered by the Navy's environmental cleanup program. While the focus of the tour was the $1.1 billion cleanup effort, the group also got a glimpse behind the locked gates and chain-link fences.

During the nearly two-hour tour, they saw already cleansed hillsides, big pits where soil is being tested and fields where it's inspected. They rolled past massive dry docks once used to repair vessels as large as aircraft carriers and a 10-story barracks that was never inhabited."

Michael Cabanatuan reports for the San Francisco Chronicle June 28, 2014.