Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), a major utility company in Northern California, has initiated a major environmental cleanup in San Francisco Bay. A floating dredger is working daily near Pier 39 to remove contaminated mud. The goal of the project is to eliminate the remaining polluted sediment left on the bay floor from a long-closed factory that produced gas for lighting in last-century saloons. The cleanup operation is expected to continue until 2030 and will ultimately treat nearly 40,000 square meters of the bay floor. The cleanup is taking place in one of San Francisco's most famous areas and is the latest in a series of remediation projects launched by the utility to clean up several old gas plants in Marina and Fisherman's Wharf. Nearly 15 years ago, the company began purchasing properties in Marina to clean up the contaminated backyards of old gas plants. In 2022, a federal judge ruled that the Northern California utility company is responsible for cleaning up the remnants of another gas plant near Ghirardelli Square. Eileen White, executive director of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, stated: "The work from Pier 39 to Pier 43 is among the most significant cleanup projects in the bay in recent decades, involving a more complex cleanup process being conducted by the federal government at the former Hunters Point Shipyard, where workers ultimately discovered a radioactive heavy metal."
