A former Navy contractor has paid $57 million to resolve federal allegations that workers substituted clean soil samples and manipulated radiation-testing data during the cleanup of San Francisco’s Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.
Manuel Orbegozo/For the S.F. Chronicle
A former Navy cleanup contractor will pay $57 million to resolve allegations that workers falsified environmental testing data during the long-running cleanup of San Francisco’s Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.
The contractor, Tetra Tech EC Inc., was accused of discarding soil samples from potentially contaminated locations and replacing them with clean soil before sending the samples to a laboratory, according to the Justice Department.
The government also alleged that Tetra Tech manipulated database records to make it appear that radiation scans taken in different locations were conducted by the same technician at the same time.
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The settlement resolves allegations that the company submitted falsified data to the Navy, which used the results to help determine whether parts of the former shipyard were safe for redevelopment.
“By falsifying work claims and manipulating critical data, Tetra Tech put its own financial interests ahead of its commitments to the Department of the Navy, potentially placing the health and safety of the American people at risk,” Acting Special Agent in Charge Brian Merkal of the NCIS Economic Crimes Field Office said in a statement.
The agency said Tetra Tech’s work was used by the Navy to determine whether parts of the former shipyard were free of harmful radiation and could be transferred to San Francisco for redevelopment.
Under contracts issued between 2003 and 2014, Tetra Tech was hired to investigate soil and buildings at the site and to perform additional cleanup wherever radiation exceeded allowable levels, according to the government’s complaint.
The alleged practices allowed the company to collect contract award fees it had not earned and avoid additional remediation work, the Justice Department said. That reduced Tetra Tech’s costs and increased its profits, the government alleged.
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“We expect companies contracting with the government to do business honestly and fairly,” Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Justice Department’s Civil Division said in a statement. “This settlement demonstrates the Department’s continuing commitment to hold accountable those who fail to fulfill their responsibilities in providing services to the U.S. military.”
The settlement resolves lawsuits filed under the whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act, a federal law that allows private individuals to sue on the government’s behalf and share in any recovery.
The whistleblowers in the case were former Tetra Tech employees and contractors. Their share of the settlement will be approximately $11.97 million, the Justice Department said.
The allegations date to a period when the Navy was preparing portions of the shipyard for a sweeping redevelopment project. The site, in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood, had been used for decades by the Navy and was closed in 1994.
The Navy’s cleanup program was complicated by the site’s industrial history, which included contamination from radioactive materials, petroleum and other hazardous substances. The agency has continued testing, monitoring and remediation work in the years since questions about Tetra Tech’s data emerged.
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Tetra Tech disclosed the proposed settlement in a 2025 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company said it agreed to the resolution to avoid the delay, uncertainty and expense of continued litigation.
The settlement contains no admission of liability, according to the filing.
“The claims resolved by the settlement are allegations only and there has been no determination of liability,” the Justice Department said.
The payment is separate from a $40 million Superfund settlement entered by a federal judge in July 2025. Together, the two settlements brought the government’s total recovery from the cases to $97 million.
The federal settlement follows criminal cases involving two former Tetra Tech supervisors. Stephen Rolfe and Justin Hubbard pleaded guilty to falsifying records related to the cleanup and were sentenced in 2018 to eight months in prison.
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Both men admitted taking part in the substitution of clean dirt for legitimate soil samples.
Hubbard admitted switching samples from four survey units, while Rolfe said he directed employees to obtain clean dirt on approximately 20 occasions, according to the Justice Department.
Tetra Tech has previously maintained that the misconduct was limited to “rogue” employees and denied that fraud was widespread.
The settlement resolves the federal government’s claims against Tetra Tech, but other legal disputes tied to the shipyard have continued.
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This month, U.S. District Judge James Donato ruled that Tetra Tech was shielded from homeowners’ claims for economic damages under the federal Price-Anderson Act, a law governing legal claims involving nuclear incidents. The homeowners had alleged that flawed cleanup work contributed to diminished property values and other harm.
Laura Waxmann and Bob Egelko contributed to this report.