The successes of 2005 are the challenges for 2006

As I try to list the Bay Chapter's accomplishments of 2005, I am faced with a striking problem. The Chapter, working in close cooperation with innumerable other environmental and community organizations, is so close to success on so many major campaigns, that whatever I write may be out-of-date before the Yodeler is even published. Even more important, each of our successes of 2005 corresponds to a need for continuing effort in 2006.

For example, just yesterday morning I learned that the San Francisco Public Utility Commission had finally approved a plan to upgrade the city's Hetch Hetchy water system that brings water from the Tuolumne River. The remarkable news is that the PUC heeded the pleas of the Sierra Club and the united environmental community and dropped a major component from the plan: construction of a fourth pipeline across the Central Valley. This decision will greatly reduce the threats of removing more water from this already hard-pressed river, but the new plan still calls for a smaller increase in the city's take of water from the river, and leaves open the possibility of expanding Calaveras Reservoir in Alameda and Santa Clara Counties. In other words, we have a tremendous victory - and a tremendous task remaining for the future.

San Francisco also seems ready finally to make a set of decisions that will make it a world leader in alternative energy. The city will become a Community Choice Aggregation city, purchasing energy for all of its residents and businesses, and will finally overcome the obstacles to issuing hundreds of millions of dollars of bonds, authorized by voters in 2001, to invest in renewable energy and energy conservation. As of this afternoon, it appears that the final decision will be held over till early next year, but we are fairly confident that it will happen.

This San Francisco energy campaign has been one of the Bay Chapter's priorities this year, and the Sierra Club has just voted to adopt "Smart Energy Solutions" as our top national-level campaign. We are looking forward to a big success on energy in San Francisco - a success that sets a national example - and we are committed to continuing efforts to help the city develop this innovative program, and to extend similar efforts to other cities and counties.

The shorelines

Another key San Francisco decision concerns the proposal by Mills Corp. to build a huge mall at Piers 27 - 31. The Sierra Club is actively involved with a large number of organizations opposing this project as a misuse of the shoreline. We are heartened by the October decision of the Board of Supervisors that the project lacks financial assurances and can therefore not receive city funds. Just yesterday Mills announced that it had canned its political consultant on the project. We will continue pressing forward, in hopes that very soon a decision can be made to scuttle the entire project and to negotiate a better plan to insure good public access to this valuable section of waterfront.

Along the Richmond shoreline, a key decision on the brink is the future of Breuner Marsh. The East Bay Regional Park District is poised to vote to acquire the marsh and its adjacent coastal-upland habitat. The city of Richmond has sued to stop the District, but this suit has little merit. The District's action will fulfill the promise made decades ago by Richmond to the African-American community of Parchester Village that this land would be saved as a park and open space. The Chapter has played a major role in the North Richmond Shoreline Alliance, which has been instrumental in saving Breuner Marsh, and we will continue working with them to protect the whole North Richmond shoreline.

Just to the south, the Chapter, working with local activists, especially Sherry Padgett and Claudia Carr of Bay Area Residents for Responsible Development (BARRD), has had a big win stopping so far a major housing development from being put on the former site of Stauffer Chemical, now known as the Zeneca site. The plan called for blowing away the pollutants with fans. Residents would have been allowed to have yards, but the soil would have been too toxic for gardens. A huge community outcry got the Department of Toxic Substances to take over jurisdiction on cleaning up the site, when Assemblymember Loni Hancock carried a bill to put DTSC in charge. Padgett and BARRD are working to get DTSC to investigate whether radioactive waste was deposited at the adjacent UC Field Station site.

Learn more about the Chapter's ongoing work on these Richmond shoreline issues at the West Contra Costa Group meeting on Wed., Jan. 25.

The year has already been a successful year for stopping other threats to the East Bay shoreline. This summer, developers withdrew their proposal to build a casino across the street from Arrowhead Marsh in Oakland after hearing an outcry of opposition from neighboring communities and environmentalists. Over the last year a series of actions by the city of Berkeley have made it clear that if a ferry terminal is built in Berkeley, it will be at the Berkeley Marina, and not at a more sensitive location that might harm Bay wildlife as well as human recreation. The Bay Chapter has been an active participant in bringing these decisions forward.

The Chapter's Marin Group has been making a difference for Marin's Pacific shoreline. We helped persuade the Golden Gate National Recreation Area to open up the planning process for Big Lagoon at Muir Beach. In the debate about the future of Bolinas Lagoon, in August the Sierra Club found its concerns validated by the findings of scientists who report that the lagoon is not liable to filling in and becoming a meadow, and that therefore a massive dredging project is not needed to preserve it. We will continue watching over these lagoons to make sure that they are properly protected.

The Gilman Street ballfields project, which the Sierra Club engendered, is on its way to a big success. Originally it had been proposed to construct fields on the Albany Plateau, a site that the Sierra Club wants to protect as open space and as habitat for the burrowing owl. Through a combination of sports-field users, environmental groups, the cities of Albany and Berkeley, the East Bay Regional Park District, and key legislative allies including Assemblymember Loni Hancock and Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, the cities have won grants for almost the entire $7 million needed for the construction of five sports fields south of Gilman Street. This is a tremendous win-win for the environment and for the kids of the East Bay, who are getting more fields at a better site. The Sierra Club played a pivotal role in making this happen.

Urban issues

The Chapter has had successes this year on a range of urban-planning issues.

In July the Metropolitan Transportation Commission approved a new policy to relate funding of transit projects to the prior introduction of appropriate land-use policies. The policy is much weaker than was urged by a coalition of community and environmental organizations led by the Transportation and Land Use Coalition, with the Sierra Club Bay Chapter an active participant, but it is the first of its kind in the nation. We will be working to extend this tentative first step into a stronger policy and to achieve transit- friendly development around future stations.

In San Francisco the Bay Chapter has helped clear the way for construction of a new Transbay Terminal. A developer had brought a lawsuit challenging the project, and the judge ordered the project halted until a new Environmental Impact Report could be prepared. The Chapter led a group of environmental organizations filing an amicus brief urging the judge to allow pre-construction work to move forward. The judge did finally allow such work, and in October the city and the developer reached a settlement agreement, whereby the city is buying out the developer's rights, and the project can continue without impediment.

The Chapter, working with other compact-development and open-space advocates, has had significant success in influencing the planning for the redevelopment of Treasure and Yerba Buena Islands from a naval base to civilian use: a new iteration of the draft Land Use Plan, released in November, is a hopeful step towards the creation of a smart Transportation Plan. We still have our work cut out to make the new community truly sustainable, but if the Transportation Plan is released before the end of the year - and done right - we may have another major success to report for this year. The Group this year did step up its efforts on these islands by creating a Treasure/Yerba Buena Island Sustainability Campaign. Also, the Sierra Club gave a 2005 national Special Service Award to Chapter leader Ruth Gravanis for her work for Bay wetlands and especially for Treasure and Yerba Buena Islands.

Open space

The Bay Chapter has seen several successes this year in our efforts to protect open space.

The Chapter led the campaign against four ballot measures brought by developers to get voters to authorize developments outside the Alameda County Urban Growth Boundary and the Contra Costa Urban Limit Line. The two bigger measures, in Livermore and Brentwood, were defeated (in Livermore by 72% of the voters). The upshot: a total of 7,300 units rejected, and only 2,100 approved. Further, the results in Pittsburg were very close, and we believe that the developers misled voters about what they were voting for. We are hoping that in the coming year we can reverse this decision. (We won on eight out of 11 of our other local election endorsements.)

One of 2004's great election victories was the passage in Hercules of a ballot measure to protect Franklin Canyon from development. Not surprisingly the developer sued, but in January and April the courts rejected both lawsuits, and the canyon remains protected.

The West Contra Costa Group also supported community groups working to block the proposed Clark Road project adjacent to Wildcat Canyon Regional Park. The developer has never formally dropped the project, but seems to have abandoned it, at least for now, in the face of overwhelming opposition.

Other successes

The Chapter has had successes this year in a wide range of other subject areas.

An agonizing issue has been the problem of bird-killing by windmills in the Altamont Pass area. The Chapter has been working in cooperation with the Center for Biological Diversity and Golden Gate Audubon Society to protect the birds while still supporting wind power as a renewable energy source. The Alameda County Board of Supervisors has approved new permits for wind operators that do include some additional protective restrictions, but not enough to reduce raptor kills by 50%, as proposed by state wildlife biologists.

The Marin Group voted to contribute $1,000 for trail restoration and endangered-species protection in the Carson Falls area of the Marin Municipal Water District watershed.

The San Francisco Group worked with dozens of other organizations to help Literacy for Environmental Justice win approval for a site for an environmental-education center, the "Living Classroom", in Herons Head Park in the Bayview district of San Francisco. This will bring an innovative nature center (hopefully by the end of 2006) to a low-income and polluted neighborhood that has received far less than its share of environmental amenities.

The San Francisco Group also persuaded the city to require posting in restaurants of notices in multiple languages warning of the dangers of mercury pollution in seafood. Special credit goes to the city's Department of the Environment and Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi.

The San Francisco Group also helped nurture the founding of a new organization, Nature in the City, to promote preservation and public knowledge of the city's remaining natural areas (see article in coming Yodeler).

The San Francisco Group had a partial success on the budget for Muni: although fares were increased (for the second year in a row), the city raised enough other revenue, through increasing parking fees and fines, to minimize service cuts and to hold Fast Pass prices constant.

The Chapter, working with Sierra Club and other transportation activists all over the state, succeeded in persuading the California High Speed Rail Authority to make two important changes in its planning:

• it will study the Altamont Rail Corridor as a possible routing to connect the Bay Area and Central Valley portions of the High Speed Rail (HSR) line;
• it has included strong legally enforceable statements on transit-oriented, compact development around HSR stations.

We have lots of work ahead to get the state to build an HSR line that realizes the great potential benefits of the technology.

In addition to all its local efforts, the Bay Chapter works locally to advance campaigns and legislation at all geographic and governmental levels. The Chapter Wilderness Committee worked especially on the passage of AB 1328 to add 31 miles of Cache Creek to California's Wild and Scenic River System. One pleasing national success was the retreat by the federal Environmental Protection Agency from a proposal to allow inadequately treated sewage to be dumped into waterways.

Donald Forman, Yodeler editor