Tag: Island Cove Market

Twenty years before COVID-19, poor and people of color, some with disabilities, and low- and middle-income market rate renters were subjected to the island’s high winds carrying toxins creating a respiratory disease cluster.

Liz Washington dedicates her story to Treasure Island mothers suffering Child Protective Services’ human rights abuses. Liz Washington’s Tenderloin apartment door rattled. Bursting in, hands on guns, San Francisco cops grabbed her nursing infant. Liz’ daughter remembers her mom’s screams. “‘Please don’t take my baby!’” Even after moving to Treasure Island, Liz never escaped CPS’ ravenous appetite for masterminding abductions of her daughter and sons.

The social worker phoned. “We’re taking custody of Chris and Michael.” The boys were transferred to foster care in Oakland. The irony of this institutional child theft was that, after four months living off-island, despite a heavy fast food diet, the boys got better. Their stomach aches and painful constipation slowly dissipated. For Liz, the common denominator was that they were not drinking polluted island water. When they returned, so did their stomach aches.

On Treasure Island May 28 and 29, 2015, the earth trembled and shook in a fenced-off location between the Island Cove Market and the Starburst Barracks. Engineers from Lennar’s vibro-compaction geotechnical subcontractor, Jafec USA, repeatedly sank four huge vibrating shafts 50 feet deep into Treasure Island fill, testing for the effect on the soil, groundwater and mud of the man-made island.