To cap or not to cap: That is the question for the third cleanup phase of prime San Diego bayfront property at the end of Eighth Avenue — used for industry over more than a century — and now slated for a 1,200-room, $230 million Hilton Hotel to open in 2006 adjacent to the Convention Center and Petco Park.

The Port of San Diego has completed a $4.3 million fuel oil cleanup of the soil from its 1930s to 1970s period as a tank storage facility. Now port staff are poring over bids for this spring’s $5 million lampblack cleanup of the site from its 50 earlier years as the gas plant that put the gas in Downtown’s gaslamps.

But that’s just spring cleaning compared to what’s next.

To mitigate the contamination from the waterfront property’s two most recent decades as the Campbell Industries shipyard, soil treatment is not an option. The estimated cost to dig and haul a humongous 180,000 cubic yards from 7.4 acres of contaminated shoreline sediment — five times more than the previous jobs — is $20 million to $30 million for the port, which in January was divested of its main revenue source, the airport. The job would take up to a year and a half.

With a February 2004 deadline with the hotel operator to clean up the site, port staff recommend creating an environmental habitat cap consisting of 115,000 cubic yards of rock and sediment. “Port staff evaluated all the alternatives, including the speedy completion of the cleanup to allow for the hotel, and the habitat cap was selected as the most feasible,” says Paul Brown, project manager for the port’s environmental services department.

The San Diego Port Tenants Association does not agree. “Our membership says the Convention Center venue is not the proper place for creating intertidal habitat,” says Richard S. Cloward, executive director of the San Diego Port Tenants Association. “We feel the proper approach is an engineered canopy to leave the water navigable. The port should then allocate a sum of money for storm drain runoff prevention.”

Cloward estimates the environmental habitat cap cost at $11 million to $15 million, and an engineered cap, five feet deep, at $5 million, with the savings going to stopping pollution. He says the fatal flaw of the proposed habitat cap plan is recontamination. “Our concern is it (the habitat cap) is irreversible. It doesn’t make sense. If you turn it into habitat, that’s it. And the day you finish, the recontamination starts.”

P&D Environmental, of Mission Valley, is working on the Campbell sediment remediation/aquatic enhancement environmental impact report.

— Terence J. Burke