The archive
throughline No. 168 August 28, 2026

Tetra Tech Paid $57 Million For Faking Clean Soil At Hunters Point

The contractor paid to verify the land was clean earned award fees measured against its own reported results, and a clean result also erased its duty to do more remediation — so verification and compensation ran through the same party, and the soil sample was in that party's hands before any lab or regulator saw it. Substitute the sample and every downstream control passes honestly.

The contractor paid to verify the land was clean earned award fees measured against its own reported results, and a clean result also erased its duty to do more remediation — so verification and compensation ran through the same party, and the soil sample was in that party's hands before any lab or regulator saw it. Substitute the sample and every downstream control passes honestly.

On August 24, 2026 DOJ announced Tetra Tech EC paid $57 million to resolve False Claims Act allegations that it substituted clean soil for real samples and manipulated scan data the Navy used to certify the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard as free of harmful radiation.

Why it matters: The 866-acre site is being cleaned parcel by parcel so it can transfer to San Francisco for housing, with the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood on the fence line; EPA has approved retesting of all soils the company previously tested.

Date to watch: The Navy's parcel retesting results, and the February 2026 Greenaction v. Navy litigation over whether the cleanup standard itself is adequate.

Sources:

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