Save The Bay Blog

Trash washed up along the shoreline of Damon Slough

Here at Save The Bay, we have been excitedly planning our clean-up at Damon Slough this Saturday. Located in Oakland’s Martin Luther King Jr. Shoreline, Damon Slough was the winner of our annual Bay Trash Hot Spots contest in 2011, beating out other trash-clogged waterways like San Jose’s Guadalupe River and Pulgas Creek in San Mateo County.

Those who visit this piece of the East Bay shoreline know that Damon Slough needs all the help it can get. This waterway is a challenging but hardly unique Bay Area landmark. With litter from the nearby Oakland Coliseum complex, a flea market and surrounding streets draining into this waterway, this sensitive slough is often inundated with trash.

All around our heavily built-out urban landscape, there are channelized and buried creeks and sloughs, where historically water would flow from the hills towards San Francisco Bay. Working at Save The Bay, I have become much more attuned to these often obscure yet interesting parts of our region’s neglected geography. The Oakland Museum of California has a great Creek Mapping Project that can help you find the buried creek in your neighborhood.

Here are some of the things we all can do to help reduce pollution in the Bay:

• Reduce the amount of trash we generate and make sure our trash doesn’t end up in the Bay. Switch to reusable bags, recycle wherever possible and compost.

• Advocate for tougher policies and regulations to reduce trash flowing to the Bay. Sign Save The Bay’s online petition calling on Bay Area mayors and city councils to pass legislation to target commonly littered items such as single-use bags and Styrofoam food ware.

• Volunteer for one of Save The Bay’s monthly cleanup and restoration events.

- Stephen Knight, Political Director

After a stern rejection in Redwood City last week, Cargill’s development partner DMB immediately promised to keep pushing to build a new city on restorable salt ponds that would threaten the health of the Bay, put residents in the path of rising seas and forever destroy open space. Despite overwhelming public opposition, these stubborn corporations clearly just don’t get it – so Bay Area residents will have to keep fighting for the largest at-risk wetlands parcel on the shoreline.

Facing a Redwood City council vote to terminate the massive “Saltworks” housing project, the developers hurriedly withdrew their pending application. This is a huge milestone and tribute to everyone who has worked to prevent the ponds from being paved, so they can be restored to tidal marsh habitat.

I’ve been involved in some big shoreline development battles, and studied the history of many more that Save The Bay has fought over the last five decades. It is common for developers to believe at the outset they can win permission to build in the Bay where others have failed. Once they are stopped, they often are willing to sell their property for conservation – that’s been the story from Bair Island in Redwood City to Cullinan Ranch near Vallejo.

I shared this history when I met with DMB and Cargill executives years ago, but they were dismissive. So they spent five years and tens of millions of dollars pummeling Redwood City residents with mail, phone calls and newspaper ads; lobbying the Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) to disregard sea level rise; trying to buy favor with campaign contributions and donations; attacking Save The Bay and local residents.

The results?

• The developers’ PR campaign backfired, making them and their project more unpopular than ever. The last public poll showed Redwood City voters oppose the project by more than 2-1. More than 200 elected officials from the Bay Area officially oppose development on these salt ponds, as do Redwood City’s neighbors. Hundreds of residents joined together in a new community organization, Redwood City Neighbors United, to fight Cargill’s development, and over a dozen labor unions opposed the plan.
• Lobbying to blow up BCDC’s climate change policies failed – the Commission enacted them last year, echoing California’s state policy discouraging development on restorable areas vulnerable to sea level rise, like the Cargill ponds.
• Pushing Redwood City to start a formal environmental impact study failed. The Saltworks review stalled at stage one, never answering the mountain of concerns residents and government agencies voiced in early comments. Now Redwood City Councilman Ian Bain and the city’s attorney publicly admit that the zoning does not permit development on these salt ponds.
• Redwood City residents are so united in their opposition that DMB and Cargill are widely seen as dividing the community, straining city staff, and distracting the City Council from a real priority – smart growth redevelopment downtown.

Save The Bay has renewed our efforts to convince Cargill and DMB not to spend more millions trying to fill in the Bay, but to change course and donate or sell these ponds so they can be fully restored. Restoring the site would help our region meet the scientifically established goal of 100,000 acres of healthy wetlands around San Francisco Bay – benefitting people and wildlife. It also would build on the opportunity that U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein and business leaders recently highlighted to protect our communities from flood risks by restoring Bay wetlands.

The San Francisco Chronicle concluded two years ago:

“There’s no good reason for Redwood City to continue entertaining a project so fraught with environmental and fiscal risk.”

and San Jose Mercury News added:

“Controversies like this take a public toll in dollars, including staff time at public agencies, and in civic energy. The region would be better off if Redwood City just dropped it.”

Clearly, the message hasn’t gotten through yet and Cargill and DMB continue to favor profits over the health of the Bay. So please share the latest update and ask your friends to join you in signing the petition telling Cargill: Don’t Pave My Bay!

- David Lewis

Invasive species like mustard threaten the health of the Bay.

It was a hot Saturday morning and my fellow field staff Jon and I were busy preparing for a full public program on Cinco de Mayo.  As we drove out onto the levee at Eden Landing Ecological Preserve we notice how well all of the California native plants were doing.  “Wow! Look at that Marsh Gumplant!”, I exclaimed with proud amazement.  With a little tender love and care from the many volunteers who helped sow and grow these wonderfully important plants, we were able to plant over 36,000 plants all around the Bay this year.

Spring has sprung here in the San Francisco Bay Area, reminding us at Save The Bay that with the hot weather and sun comes a new season for restoration. It’s Weeding Season!  Not only are our native plants blooming but so are a few plants that are non-native and in many cases invasive the tidal salt marsh.

As I begin to explain the restoration project to the group of eager volunteers, questions begin to pop up about why we are killing these plants.  Often I hear things like “These plants look nice”, “Where and how did these plants get here?”, and “Don’t animals use these invasive plants as habitat?”

Non-native invasive plants come from somewhere else because of human activity:

“When plants that evolved in one region of the globe are moved by humans to another region, a few of them flourish, crowding out native vegetation and the wildlife that feeds on it… These invasive plants have a competitive advantage because they are no longer controlled by their natural predators, and can quickly spread out of control.”  (California Invasive Plant Council)

The tidal salt marshes that ring the Bay are a prime candidate for non-native species.  All of the sites have changed significantly over the past 200 years.  As soon as humans began migrating here in large numbers, we began to drastically alter the salt marsh landscape.  Levees and dikes were created to drain the marshes for agriculture.  Cities were built and harbors were dredged in our marshes.  These interactions greatly affected the way the salt marshes functioned and brought loads of non-native invasive plants to the area.

Volunteers bask in their accomplishment of ridding Eden Landing Ecological Preserve of a mountain of invasive mustard plants.

Many of these plants are a common sight in the supermarket, such as fennel, mustard, radish, and oats.  They were first brought here by farmers looking to sow their crops on the land created when the salt marshes were drained.  Many other plants came by ships coming to port and inadvertently brought exotic seeds with them.  Invasive plants can significantly degrade wildlife habitat and are the second-greatest threat to endangered species, after habitat destruction.

As I explain these facts to the volunteers, they begin to get the big picture of our restoration process.

That Saturday morning the levees were covered in a thick wall of mustard.  But, by the end of the program everyone one of us felt a sense of accomplishment.  The wall of mustard threatening to spread its seed across our newly installed native plants was no more. Now the volunteers stood on what they affectionately dubbed “Mustard Mountain” all ready to be composted!

Come learn more about invasive plants. Volunteer during weeding season!

- Jack States, Restoration Projects Team Leader

Earlier this week, we shared that the developers behind Cargill’s massive bay fill project have officially withdrawn their proposal to build thousands of houses on Redwood City’s restorable salt ponds. The fight is not over, so please take action and tell Cargill: it’s time to sell these salt ponds to be restored – not paved over! 

In addition to hearing residents’ opposition to this misguided development plan,  Redwood City’s City Council banned Styrofoam at Monday night’s meeting. Save The Bay continues to fight for strong policies to stop plastic trash from polluting our waterways. This is vital work, as scientists announced that plastic trash in the Pacific Ocean has increased a hundredfold since the 1970s.  Save The Bay’s Allison Chan urged San Jose to ban polystyrene, a call that was echoed in the Huffington Post. All this, plus a settlement reached in 2009 San Francisco Bay oil spill. And Alameda Navy base has become an endangered bird haven. Read on!

Palo Alto Daily News 5/8/2012
Even after Redwood City Saltworks project is withdrawn, furor continues
Even though developer DMB Pacific Ventures formally withdrew its controversial Saltworks application last week, about two dozen people showed up at the Redwood City City Council meeting Monday night to give their two cents’ worth about the project, and then some.”We are united in our opposition to the Saltworks project no matter how it is ultimately configured,” said Nancy Arbuckle, a member of Redwood City Neighbors United, which has drawn the battle lines against any development of the former Cargill salt flats east of Highway 101, just south of Seaport Boulevard.
Read more >> 
More news coverage on the death of the 50/50 plan >>

Redwood City Patch 5/8/2012
Styrofoam Ban to Begin in 2013
In a growing regional effort to reduce the use of non-biodegradable products, the city council voted last night to prohibit businesses from using single-use disposal styrofoam products starting January 2013.
Read more>>

San Jose Mercury News 5/9/2012
Scientists find hundredfold increase in plastic trash in Pacific Ocean since 1970s
The amount of plastic in the ocean area known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” has increased a hundredfold since the early 1970s, according to a new study, and the alarming findings could pressure California and other coastal states to do more to reduce plastic trash.
Read more >> 

San Jose Mercury News 5/4/2012
May 5 Readers’ letters: Polystyrene foam is worse than plastic bags
Thank you for giving attention to the plastic problem in our oceans (“Silicon Valley must do its part to reduce plastic in oceans,” Editorial, May 1) and the role Silicon Valley cities should play in the solution. The city of San Jose should not only support a regional plastic bag ban, but also address another plastic product polluting our waterways — polystyrene foam. The council’s decision to prohibit its use at city facilities does not address the ubiquitous use of this unrecyclable product throughout San Jose. Polystyrene foam is easily broken and littered, and difficult to clean up. Save The Bay strongly supports bans throughout the bay. And as other cities in the county move forward with bans, San Jose should be a leader, not a follower.
Read more >>

Huffington Post Green 5/9/2012
Plastic Money: Under the Influence of Styrofoam
There are leaders in San Jose who can put pencil to paper and give us technological wonders to enhance our world tomorrow but who lack the vision to see how banning Styrofoam can enrich our world today.
Read more >>

San Jose Mercury News 5/8/2012
Settlement reached in 2009 San Francisco Bay oil spill
The owner and operator of the Dubai Star, an oil tanker that spilled 422 gallons of thick, black bunker fuel into San Francisco Bay in 2009, will pay $1.96 million to settle the case with state and local authorities.
Read more >>

San Francisco Chronicle 5/6/2012
Alameda Navy base now a much-sought wildlife Eden
California least terns are small and endangered, but they’re not afraid of mayhem. After all, they nest on airport runways.
Read more >> 

Bikers enjoy our beautiful shoreline bike paths. dansullivanimages.com

It’s Bike to Work week, so the Save The Bay wonks thought it would be a great opportunity to talk about one of our favorite long-term projects, and how we can work together to increase the number of shoreline bike and walking paths around the Bay, as well as expanding access to thousands of acres of public land.

Of course, we’re talking about the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority, and in particular, their mandate for “improvement of public access to the coast, and protection, restoration, and enhancement of habitats…corridors…scenic areas, and other open-space resources.”  As we’ve mentioned in previous blog posts here and here, Save The Bay is working hard to ensure that the Restoration Authority can move forward with increasing revenues for the restoration, protection, and expansion of access to roughly 35,000 acres of historic tidal marsh that have been cut off from Bay waters since the early 1900’s.

Today, there are over 310 miles of Bay Trail open and accessible to bicyclists, with nearly 200 miles still to be competed.  Over the coming months, we’ll be sharing exciting news about our work to restore this critical habitat for the benefit of fish, wildlife, and those crazy critters who use two wheels to enjoy our incredible Bay shoreline.

- Patrick Band, Policy Associate