Toxic site cleanups take longer in parts of San Francisco where fewer residents are white, a new data analysis from the San Francisco Public Press shows. The analysis also shows that a higher proportion of residents who are Black, Indigenous and other people of color in an area correlates directly with longer cleanup durations.
Across all sites in San Francisco, cleanups took more than four years longer in areas with high proportions of BIPOC residents than in majority white areas. The size, complexity and nature of toxic sites varies and could account for some differences but further analysis shows that these disparities hold when comparing sites of similar complexity and size.