Marine Hospital Cemetery Underneath Landfill 8
Back in 1994 I commented on the Army’s Record of Decision for the Public Health Service Hospital (PHSH) which included Landfill 8, a 2.6 acre deposit of rubble and debris up to 15 feet deep, located just to the north and behind the PHSH. I was deeply concerned that this landfill was placed over an old neglected merchant marine cemetery. The poor treatment of this forgotten cemetery was not appropriate within a national park. Something more needed to happen.
The years went by. Priorities came and went. The cemetery remained, buried under waste.
Periodically, the Presidio Restoration Advisory Board (RAB) would comment on the subject. In 1997 the RAB developed a set of Landfill Closure Principles and passed a Landfill Resolution.
As recently as 2006, the RAB submitted this comment to the Presidio Trust regarding Landfill 8.
We believe that the Presidio is better served in the long run by excavating a portion of the waste that currently covers the cemetery, without disturbing the remains. We believe that the extra costs associated with this remedy are small compared with the benefits of additional waste removal. The additional 3 feet of debris and waste removed from over top of the cemetery in Alternative 5A more appropriately addresses a permanent and respectful treatment of the cemetery, while at the same time, leaves space for the proposed sand cover material, so that a 5 foot mound is not created as we visualize would occur in remedy 5B.
Now, due to the development at the PHSH, the site remedy has been moved to the front burner. The team is working on a final remedy for this site. There are metals, pesticides and other contaminants at or near the surface of the landfill. The Presidio Trust favors covering the area with three to five feet of sand, restoring native dune habitat and creating a memorial for the Marine Hospital Cemetery. This remedy would protect human health and the environment by covering up the area. It would also not disturb any human remains.
While I think this would work, we still haven’t fully vetted this situation. There are a large number of bodies (between 500 and 600) buried at this site. The interred are from many countries. A large effort has been made by the Presidio Trust to understand the origin of the remains and a site history compilation is contained in this thoughtful report. Here is a very brief excerpt on the nationalities of those interred at the site.
The sailors buried in the Hospital Cemetery hailed from ports all over the world. The list in Appendix D represents 30 of the United States and 43 countries. After American sailors, most came from Sweden, followed by Norway, Finland, Germany and Ireland. Some even came from such exotic locales as Tahiti and the Cape Verde Islands. It is quite possible that these foreign sailors ended up in the Hospital Cemetery because they were unable to communicate information regarding family or friends to their doctors.
I believe that we must examine this situation more closely prior to implementing a final remedy, which would further bury the site. We need to examine the various laws that are relevant to this complex issue. When that analysis is complete we may then consider whether it is indeed appropriate and necessary to engage in a larger project to carefully restore this piece of Presidio history. Here is an article originally published in the San Francisco Call on March 29, 1896 that gives a sense of the history we need to preserve.
– Doug Kern
Tags: landfill, Landfill 8, Marine Hospital Cemetery, pesticides, PHSH, presidio of san francisco